


Imperfections 9: Unexpected Places and Other Strange Roads

by Dasha (Dasha_mte), Dasha_mte



Series: Imperfections [9]
Category: Benson - Fandom, Bones (TV), Highlander: The Series, Numb3rs, Psych, Quantum Leap, Stargate Atlantis, The Sentinel
Genre: AU Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-30
Updated: 2011-03-07
Packaged: 2017-10-16 04:19:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 53,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dasha_mte/pseuds/Dasha, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dasha_mte/pseuds/Dasha_mte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Really, something had to be done about Brackett! Multiple crossover. Warnings for violence and language.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Not my characters. Not my universe.
> 
> Notes: So the crossover AU has expanded yet again: Benson, Bones, Diagnosis Murder, Numb3rs, Psych, and Quantum Leap--in addition to the usual. I really, really wanted to squeeze in Murder She Wrote, but I just couldn't do it. Bah. Maybe next time. If you're curious about the crossovers, email me or check in at my Live Journal.
> 
> Because everything belongs to other people (or large, corporate entities with the legal rights of people), all disclaimers apply. I can't take credit for any of the best parts.
> 
> I am deeply indebted to Martha, Quasar, and, Dreamfall for their wonderful help getting this ready. The fact that it took so darn long is in no way their fault.

~Late Sept 1996

Monday

"At first, you know, it was a regular seminar," Sandburg was saying, "just for the new grad students. They held it in one of the first floor classrooms over in Hargrove. It's gotten so popular now, though, that they moved it to the small lecture hall over in Briggs."

Jim smothered a smile. "People come to this for fun?"

"Well, the anthro undergrads. And some of the psych undergrads. And usually a few from the nursing school, we're starting to get a few nursing students picking up some courses to get a head start on their AG(N). And some of the Art, Architecture, and Design faculty."

Jim shook his head. How hard up could the higher ed community be, that they were coming to an orientation lecture for entertainment? He didn't have the right to talk, though. He had been talked into coming 'for fun,' after all. And look, just ahead of them going in the doors were Joel and Marcia. Apparently this qualified as a 'lunch date.' Jim nudged Sandburg and motioned toward the couple.

Sandburg snickered. "Oh, yeah, she's still trying to scare him off," he muttered.

Without pausing, Marcia glanced back and casually, her hand where Joel couldn't see, flipped him off. Sandburg responded with a friendly wave and whispered, "It won't work. I don't see the attraction myself, but Joel is completely smitten with her."

Jim knew she could hear that. He rolled his eyes and knocked Sandburg gently on the head. "Quit being a shit."

Pausing in the doorway, Jim looked down on the arcing rows of desks that ended on a small, low stage at the bottom. The 'small' lecture hall looked like it would hold about a hundred and fifty people, but this early it was nearly empty. Joel and Marcia had followed the gently sloping floor down to the bottom and were taking seats on the very far left. Jim considered following them briefly, but there was no way he wanted to be confused with a 'good' student. He nudged Sandburg ahead of him into the top row where the seats backed up against the wall.

Students in torn jeans and battered backpacks wandered in. The undergraduates moved in small clusters, laughing and joking. The serious ones--smelling stressed and looking a little lost--those had to be the new guide students. Jim tried to imagine what Sandburg had been like in those days. He couldn’t. At this point, he couldn't even picture his guide as a student anymore.

Jack Kelso came in and tidily angled his chair into the narrow space between Jim's seat and the entryway. "Mind if I join you?" he asked.

Jim leaned over and smelled him. It was rude, he knew. It was perfectly fine to smell crime victims and suspects and family members and his guide, but colleagues and casual acquaintances, no. Certainly not Sandburg's supervisor; Jim didn't have to the right to just take information that wasn't given voluntarily.

Except Jack never showed any sign of disapproval or offense.

From Jim's other side, Sandburg said, "Sure, but what are you doing up here? Isn't this your show?"

"Not any more," Jack said cheerfully. "It was eating into my research time. Four years was enough. Angela is the new graduate director effective last week." He motioned toward the stage where a tall, dark-haired woman was speaking to John Sheppard and Dr. McKay, the presenters.

"You are kidding me," Sandburg squeaked, and Jim remembered that before Jack had been Blair's advisor--well, how many professors named Angela could the anthropology department have? Right down there was the women who had told Blair he would never have what it took to be a good guide.

"Blair," Jack said sternly, "your personality conflict with Angela aside, she is a very good guide and a very good teacher."

Jim felt a flicker of irritation. He pushed it down and motioned for Blair to back down. "Not your problem anymore, Chief," he said. Another four months and Sandburg would be finished with his supervised practicum. He'd have his papers and then nobody's opinion would matter but Jim's.

Down on the low podium, the new graduate director was calling for quiet. Sheppard had seated himself casually on top of the short demonstration bench. McKay had taken a position behind the podium. The last of the straggling students hurried to seats.

"Good afternoon. My name is John Sheppard and I'm an Accredited Guide (Anthropologist). I've been invited here to scare the crap out of any undergraduates who are considering guide school and to make sure that the new grad students lose any last scraps of romanticism they might still be carrying."

"Statistically, most of you will make lousy guides anyway," McKay added, looking deeply unimpressed.

Sheppard stopped and turned to face his partner. "You just got the talk about not verbally abusing students. Again."

"Yeah, so?"

John sighed. "So. That is your boss. Sitting right there." He pointed to a suit in the front row.

"They're not our students!" McKay protested irritably.

The audience dissolved into laughter. So did Sheppard, but he sobered quickly. "The problem is, he's not actually trying to be funny. My partner is abrasive, impatient, short-tempered, and selfish."

Jim found himself watching the kids spread out in front of him. They were watching with rapt attention. Now they looked toward McKay to see how he would take this appraisal. Rodney shrugged and nodded. "Yeah," he said, "Pretty much."

"He also doesn’t much care what other people think of him. He's demanding and unforgiving. If he can't sleep, I can't sleep. If he's bored, it's my job to be entertaining. If he's upset over something at work, I will hear about it for hours. Or possibly days. He drives me absolutely crazy.

"At the same time, he is my best friend. He's funny. He's brilliant. He's an excellent cook. He loves water slides and math games and word games, and he is my family.

"Rodney is fragile. Statistically speaking, sometime in the next twelve to fifteen years I will probably have to watch him die."

Jim swallowed hard. This wasn't what he expected. Down on the stage, McKay didn't seem particularly upset by this frank discussion of his own mortality, but next to Jim, Jack suddenly smelled sour and unhappy.

"In the program here, you'll study the theory that says the best way to keep a sentinel healthy and comfortable is to be professional and careful and make no mistakes. You'll also study the theory that says that your own compassion and willingness to get emotionally involved is what will make the biggest difference in your partner's life chances. I'm not going to get into the pros and cons of this argument. This fall Rainier is hosting a small conference on guide theory. We'll have the top people on both sides locked in a room together, and I'm sure they'll work it out." He glanced at Jack and smiled slightly. "Today, I'm going to talk about the problems you can't solve.... The days when nothing you've learned, no good idea you have, nothing you do seems to help. And no matter how good your training is, no matter how much you care, there will be days when nothing you do makes any difference and everything goes to shit."

He took a deep breath, rubbed his hands together. "How many guides before me, Rodney?"

"An even dozen if we don't count Margaret. And she only lasted two days, so I don't usually count her."

Sheppard smothered a smile. "And were they all incompetent?"

"Oh, no. A little more than half of them quit because they really hated me. They had trouble accepting constructive criticism." He shot Sheppard a mildly irritated look. "You're no better, but instead of cutting and running, you just do whatever the hell you want anyway."

Jim was beginning to see what Blair had meant about this being funny. McKay didn't actually have to put effort into sounding grumpy and bossy. He interrupted his partner's lecture frequently and flapped his hands in 'blah blah' motions when he thought things weren't moving fast enough.

Framed by this teasing patter, though, were stories that were, frankly, hair-raising. Rodney had a couple of medical conditions that were so rare and bizarre that doctors not only hadn't named them yet, they weren't even sure they existed. Except they were apparently life-threatening and progressive. A list of chemical triggers that covered both sides of a sheet of paper--small print, two-column. Repeated hospitalizations, one while John was out of town and under arrest.

"The only new item to add to the list since we gave this talk last year happened in December, when, standing on a girder of an unfinished building forty stories in the air, Rodney reacted to an exposure we still haven't identified and hallucinated he was in a zoo surrounded by wild animals."

"Oh, come on," McKay groused. "You act like it's such a big deal. Most of us hallucinate animals now and then." He looked around impatiently. "I recognize at least four other sentinels here. How many of you have seen things that weren't there? Well, get your hands up. Don't be shy."

Jim raised his hand. So did someone he didn't recognize. Mike, from the Anthro Department and Marcia didn't move.

Rodney glared. "Yeah. Like I believe that. Raise your hand, Marcia. Admit to your boyfriend that you're just as psycho as the rest of us."

She put her hand up slowly.

"There. See. It's just over-active brain cells acting out or something. It happens every few years. Sun spots maybe. It's not a big deal."

It happens every day, Jim thought. Every day. And not just that damn panther anymore, either. There was a spotted jaguar that had taken to haunting his dreams, and a raccoon, quick and clever, that he saw sometimes when he was relaxed for a body check. And a hound that he always saw when he visited the morgue. And some kind of lean, funny-looking rodent that hovered at the edge of his vision. The last one was almost visible most of the time. It hovered in shadows and in corners. Jim could never look straight at it, but it seemed to be a little mangy and battered.

When Jim turned his attention to the stage again, he realized he had missed some of the program. McKay and Sheppard were arguing about food. Or scheduling, it was hard to tell. Jack was sagging sideways, laughing helplessly. Blair looked pensive.

"Apparently, this tendency to micromanage is fairly common," Sheppard was saying irritably. "But, Rodney, you could not do my job."

This brought McKay up sharp in the middle of whatever tirade he had going. "No. That's true. He's right. I could not do his job. There is no amount of money that would induce me to try."

"Aw. Rodney. Not even for me?" Sheppard laughed.

McKay didn’t seem to think it was funny. "Especially not for him." He spoke a little stiffly, his eyes on the audience, not his partner. "When John had his appendix out, I was frantic. I very nearly had to be sedated. And I didn't have to make any decisions. I can't imagine being a guide, having a partner in the hospital and being presented with two options, both of which might be effective, both of which might have fatal side effects...and no way to know ahead of time. I couldn't do this job. I don't know how anyone does."

There was a long silence. As it became clear that they had nothing more to say, the new graduate director stood up and thanked them for their presentation. Slowly, the students stood up and made for the door. They looked a little shell-shocked.

Jack was penned in by the students coming up the isle, so Jim and Sandburg were penned in by Jack. "I've been meaning to talk to you," Jack said. "Something you might be interested in. Or not, I'll leave it up to you."

"What is it?" Jim asked, turning in his seat to face him.

"A friend of mine is doing a study of late bloomers. He's looking for participants. I said I'd put the word out."

Jim went cold. "A research project?"

Jack nodded. "He's having trouble locating subjects. It's not like there's a national directory for that."

"There are files--"

"Of scores on the national tests. Which nobody usually takes until they're looking for a job or college placement and want numbers to put on their resume."

Oh.

"I don't think so," Sandburg said, but Jim said, "What kind of study?"

"A medical exam. Questions. A lot of questions. Some on a list that the participants answer themselves, and some the researcher asks in person."

"I'm not...I mean, I can't imagine my experience was," he edited out the word "normal" just in time, "representative."

"The truth is, we don't know what's representative, Jim. The phenomenon was studied to death in the fifties, but our theoretical models and medical knowledge have changed a great deal since then. There's a lot to be learned."

"And you think I should sign up?"

Jack laid a hand on his arm. "I think you should look at the material and decide."

"You know this guy?"

Jack nodded. "A friend of mine. A medical doctor. The best, actually. That's my ulterior motive here, I want you on this man's list. Not that I expect we'll ever need him for a consult, but if we did....He's the best doctor I've ever seen. He'll be here for the conference John mentioned. You could meet him yourself."

"I'll think about that," Jim said.

Most of the crowd had cleared out by then. Sheppard and McKay were coming up the aisle. Rodney leaned down and passed his face a few inches above Jack's shoulder. Jack didn't react to Rodney's rudeness any more than he had to Jim's. "Fantastic job, guys," he said.

"I don't know," John drawled in exaggerated boredom. "I think some of the material is getting a little stale. And Rodney's delivery was never that great to begin with."

McKay snorted and rocked his hip into Sheppard, not quite hitting him hard enough to knock him off balance. "I swear, you ego is just--gigantic."

"My ego? My ego! Jack, guys, he's making a web page. It's completely shameless. A massive tribute to Rodney's brain."

"That's just fact," Rodney said. "Name one thing on there that isn't true."

He was so into the argument that he didn’t notice Marcia and Joel coming up behind them until Marcia said, "Does it mention that you're an insufferable bastard?"

"You know, what puzzles me is, how were you ever a spy? I mean, aren't spies supposed to be clever and subtle?"

Sheppard stepped between them. "All right, children. That's enough."

It was just a bit too far. Marcia's usual irritability evaporated, leaving her pinched and white with icy anger. McKay didn't notice, of course. It was the sharp smell of Jack's distress that brought him around and caused him to stammer an apology.

The lecture hall suddenly seemed too small and claustrophobic. "We've got to get back to the station, Chief," he said, nudging Blair around the others and toward the door.

Jim's current transportation was an ancient Ford truck that replaced the SUV, which had been destroyed--thorough no fault of Jim's--in a fiery explosion at the end of July. In the wake of yet another personal vehicle trashed in the line of duty, the insurance on something new was enough to buy a whole additional vehicle, so Jim had gone with something...economical.

Sandburg was grinding his teeth, but he didn't say anything until they were in the truck with the engine running. "How bad is it?" he asked.

"How bad is what?" Jim asked. Knowing Sandburg, it could be anything.

"How sick is Jack?"

Jim wondered what he was missing. He looked at Sandburg blankly.

"He liked being Graduate Director, Jim. He liked hosting the annual party. He liked meeting with the prospective students. He never missed a deadline. He wouldn't just quit. Something's wrong, so spill."

Jim thought about that. "I'm pretty sure asking me to sniff people out and tell you private information is rude."

"Yeah. It's a fucking ugly breach of privacy and trust. Spill."

"He's all right. Mostly. He lost a lot of research time while he was recovering. And there has to be a lot of work involved in getting ready for that conference Sheppard mentioned. And except when she's working--and she only works a few days a week--he's Marcia's guide. Blair, he smelled tired and stressed out most of the time before the shooting put him weeks behind. I'm sure hated to give up the position, but something just had to go."

"And that's it. Something just had to go."

"That's it," Jim said, shrugging.

Sandburg was unusually silent on the way back to the PD. He didn't even complain when Jim stopped at the Wonderburger drive-through and bought them hamburgers and fries for lunch.

The plan had been to eat at their desk while working on paperwork, but Henri caught them on the way in. "There's a couple of guys waiting for you in the conference room. They say it's about the Brackett case. They won't talk to anybody else."

Jim thanked him politely, set the sack of burgers on the desk, and walked calmly and casually to the conference room. As close as a second shadow, Sandburg followed.

The two men waiting were completely different from one another. One was White, middle-aged, and smelled of exhaustion and despair. The other was Black, only a few years older than Sandburg, and smelled of excitement and anger. They both jumped up as Jim and Sandburg entered.

Jim had walked into hundreds of meetings with hundreds of strangers, talked about vital topics--

He'd always known what to say before. "I'm Detective Ellison. Please--sit down."

They glanced at each other. They sat down.

Jim nodded to Sandburg, motioning for him to stay by the door. Guarding the exit? Or keeping out of the way of danger?

"My name is Alan Eppes. This is Burton Guster," the older man said. "We're--" he stumbled to a stop, his voice drying up. He pushed two files across the table. Jim flipped them open.

Two young men, mid to late twenties. White. Dark hair. They both had summary sheets from Princeton Testing, the kind released to potential employers. If Jim was reading the scores correctly, they were both highly rated and talented sentinels.

"They've been missing since the beginning of June," Eppes said in a flat recitation. "They were taken the same day--This one, my son, Charlie Eppes, from our home in Los Angeles. And Shawn Spencer from his place of work in Santa Barbara."

"Shawn...He wasn't predictable. He took off sometimes, you know?" Guster said. "The door was locked. An empty pizza box lying around. We didn't have a case.... I didn't think anything of it for a couple of days. And then I didn't know where to look."

Eppes took up the narrative. "It was the same day as the bridge explosion. The terrorist attack. The police didn't have the manpower to address--they took it seriously. Charlie consulted--consults--with several federal agencies. But there was no sign of forced entry, no sign of an intruder. Don--" he broke off and looked away.

Into the pause, Guster said quickly. "His guide. Don Eppes. Charlie's older brother. He was shot during the abduction, unconscious for several days. He didn't remember what had happened. He and Charlie had been quarreling....at first the police thought Charlie was a suspect who'd fled the scene."

"For shooting his guide," Jim repeated. And how far had he come in the last year, that that idea actually shocked him? "The police thought he was the prime suspect for shooting his guide?"

"By the time the police in LA were searching for Charlie Eppes as a kidnapping victim," Guster said, "The police in Santa Barbara were already sure that Shawn had just taken off and I was a really annoying pest. The, um, the police at home didn't like Shawn much."

"Trouble maker?" Jim asked, glancing at the files the two men had accumulated.

"Private investigator. He kept...solving cases."

Jim winced inwardly. No, he wouldn't like competing with a privately hired sentinel either.

"We didn't get together until a couple of weeks ago," Eppes said. "Gus had a witness, a man who worked for the accountant next door. He did a composite drawing that the FBI thinks might be Lee Brackett. But they have no idea where Brackett is." He reached across and pulled a copy of a pencil drawing from one of the files.

It was Lee.

Blair came over and took the page from his hand. "That's him. Oh, my god, he's collecting sentinels."

Jim already felt like he'd been gut-punched. Sandburg's words just dragged it out into the open. "The sex therapist," he gasped. And they'd known, hadn't they, that something was up. They'd been waiting until the other shoe dropped. The Los Vegas PD had thought he was a perv who got his jollies tormenting sentinels and Simon and Cascade PD psychologist had thought he was trying to make a name for himself as a hired killer. But Jim--

Jim should have known. He looked around for the animals that had bee ghosting him all these weeks. Of course, there was no sign of them now. Jim tried to take a deep breath. He couldn't. Well--to hell with breathing. He surged to his feet. He had to warn--everybody. Brackett was collecting sentinels--

Sandburg's hand on his arm was strong. He nudged Jim back into his chair. "Look at the times, Jim," he said leaning over Jim's shoulder and tapping the scattered pages. "How long does it take to get from LA to Santa Barbara? About an hour and a half?"

"When it's not rush hour. When the traffic isn't backed up everywhere because of a bridge bombing," Guster said.

"So he's not working alone," Sandburg said.

Jim looked back down at the files. Some of the pages were copies of police reports. Some were filled with photographs of people or places. Some were handwritten lists.

"Don says that Charlie--that he was taken by a woman. But he couldn't give us a description."

Sandburg nodded. "We know Brackett was working with a woman. At least for a while this spring."

Eppes leaned forward. "We can't convince anyone that the cases are connected."

Jim stood up slowly. He felt remarkably calm. "Wait here," he said. "Sandburg--get them some coffee or something. This will take a few minutes."

Steady on his feet and completely clear-headed, Jim walked back to his desk and ran a missing persons search for sentinels who'd disappeared since Lee's escape. It took five minutes for the computer to spit out a list of six people. Looking at, Jim could eliminate two right off the bat: a seven year-old boy whom witnesses said had been taken by the non-custodial parent and a fifteen year-old girl who'd run away with her boyfriend. There had been on sign of either of them in two months, and if Lee had been behind it, he would have killed the boyfriend and not bothered to hide the body.

The others...maybe. Shawn Spencer was on the list. Charles Eppes wasn't. Jim changed databases and ran another search: sentinels as victims of crimes. This one would take longer and be less precise. While 'sentinel, like height and eye color, was a search parameter for missing persons, it would only be included hit-or-miss in the notes section of this database.

***

Blair got the two men coffee. Then he went to check on Jim, who was completely wrapped up in his computer. Right. Okay. This might be one of those days when Jim needed a partner working on the case more than he needed a guide fussing over his shoulder. Blair went back to the conference room.

"So. Anyway," he said. "I'm Blair Sandburg, Jim's guide. Do you mind if I--" he motioned to the files they'd brought.

"No, go ahead," Alan Eppes said. "Please."

They weren't like police files. These were clearly personal. "They were both self-employed?"

"No," Guster said. "Charlie was a consulted through the university, and Shawn set up an LLC when he opened the Detective Agency. He'd majored in accounting for a term and a half in college."

Blair spotted a resume in Spencer's file and pulled it out. It was three pages long. He frowned, trying to picture what kind of sentinel--

"I did that," Guster said. "Last year. It was a joke, you know? Kind of a hint that it was time to get his act together...."

"Oh. So he didn't spend three months in 1991 as a beach comber?"

"Oh, no! That's all true."

Blair gaped openly at the resume. "What kind of a sentinel works at Wonderburger? How could he even get a job at Wonderburger? I can't believe they'd hire a guide--"

"He didn’t tell them."

"Mr. Guster--"

"Gus. Call me Gus."

"I don't understand. These jobs--" There was no college graduation date, although that was not unusual; even as "unskilled labor" there were decent jobs a sentinel could get. But most of these jobs weren't like that. Five months as a fire inspector, yeah, okay. Life guard. Mystery shopper, odd, but maybe. But what kind of job was "concessions vendor" for a sentinel. In five cities. And "foot and ankle model" in Tulsa? ESL teacher in Thailand? Hotel desk clerk? Water-ski instructor? Mardi-Gras float construction? Event planner? Choir director? Chicken sexer? "I don't even know what a 'chicken sexer' does."

"Shawn is really intelligent, but he has a short attention span. He's curious about everything," Gus said.

"But--A sentinel--how could he get hired for--"

"Mr. Sandburg," Eppes said, "What can you tell me about Lee Brackett? And what has this man done with my son?"

Blair swallowed hard. "I don't know," he said.

"Is he torturing Charlie? For--for--" his hands groped helplessly.

Blair felt sick. Did Brackett get his jollies watching sentinels suffer? Dr. Grissom in Las Vegas thought so. Blair--hated him too much to form his own opinion. "He...didn't go out of his way to hurt Jim. Not until after." Blair gulped a little. "He was impatient and short-tempered and cold and controlling. And he was a bad guide--"Blair realized he wasn't helping and shut his mouth. "He was a public service guide," 'public service' being a euphemism for military and spy training. "He quit the CIA a couple of years back. I--I don't know how he thinks or what he wants. I--" Jack would. Jack understood Brackett; he'd come from the same world, worked, for years, with men just like him.

There was no way that Blair was going to ask Jack for help. He was already overworked and behind. The last time Blair had called him for help, he had ended up in the hospital.

But. Jack took Brackett's existence almost as a personal affront. That a guide could do the kinds of things that Brackett did, that a system existed to produce a whole line of brutal bastards who failed and neglected their partners as part of just another day at work--Jack would want in on this. And he wouldn't forgive Blair for concealing new information.

Blair had left is cell phone in his backpack in the bullpen, but there was a phone on the wall of the conference room. He had dialed half of the department's number before realizing that Jack would not be there. There had been a guest lecturer that day, and it was usual to take them out for a meal or at least drinks afterwards. He dialed Jack's cell phone, instead, and hoped it was turned on.

It was: "Kelso."

"Jack, it's Blair. I'm sorry. We've had--ah--something turn up in the Brackett case. I, ah--"

"Are you at the station? I'll be there in twenty minutes." And he was gone. Blair hung up the phone and sat back down.

He had to force himself to meet the eyes of the two men who were waiting. Blair understood what they were feeling. Jim had been kidnapped the previous winter. He wasn't gone for long, just a couple of days, but it had been horrible. A son, a partner--until Jim, Blair had never really had somebody to worry about but Naomi, and although he hadn't always known where she was, she had never been taken away against her will. It wasn't the same. Blair had always tried to be a compassionate and sympathetic guy, but he couldn't have imagined what their fear and pain might be like, not until he'd lived it.

Before Blair had to figure out what he could possibly say, Jim came back with a stack of print-outs that started with a list of names. He read them off slowly. None of them were familiar to their guests. They were all sentinels who were missing or victims of recent crimes and currently unaccounted for. None of the names were familiar.

"You're not saying Brackett took that many people," Gus protested. "Where's he hiding them? How can there be no trace?"

"I don't think he took them all, no," Jim said. "But at this point, I don't know how to narrow down how many or which ones."

Mr. Eppes closed his eyes. "Run the numbers for the previous three months and again for both periods for last year. The average would give you a place to start. If there's been a large jump in the number of disappearances." He opened his eyes and looked at them. "I don't know what to do next. I could never follow Charlie after it started to get complicated. See who fit the victim profile, I suppose. But two data points doesn't give us much of a profile. Sentinel. Male, I suppose. White. Mid to late twenties. Pretty common--"

"Three data points," Jim said. "In May there was a botched a grab for one in Las Vegas. Female, early forties, I think. Self-employed. We might be able to add that to the pattern--self-employed or consulting."

When Jack arrived a few minutes later, Gus and Mr. Eppes told their stories again. Jim showed him the lists of crimes. Everyone waited expectantly, although Blair, for one, could not have said what he was expecting.

What he said was, "Jim can you get the list from last December?"

It turned out that Jim had it memorized: Name, age, occupation, date of abduction. He grabbed a legal pad that had been left in the corner and began to write it out.

"You think it's the same people--but, Jack, they're still in jail. There's no bail, it's going to trial in a couple of months--"

"The hired help is still in jail," Jack corrected. "Whoever had the resources to arrange and pay for that operation," he tisked softly. "Nope."

"There isn't a lot you can do with an abducted sentinel."

Breeding program, Blair thought. But no, you wouldn't take a woman over forty for that.

Jack questioned the out of towners closely, and then hinted that maybe they should get take a rest--settle into the hotel, eat a late lunch--while he did some research.

As soon as they were gone, Jack took the finished list from Jim and drew lines through "Cassie Wells" and "Aaron Mabry." "A mistake they won't make again," he said. "After losing two, they'll be very careful with Sentinel health. Hmmm. Also, law enforcement and search and rescue--they won't try that again, either. You and Fraser gave them too much trouble. They won't want someone they have to subdue." From the current lists, Jack crossed out everyone in law-enforcement or ex-army. Then he crossed out everyone over forty-five or under eighteen. "I assume we can get more information?" he asked. "Medical information? We can discount fragile or questionable sentinels, too."

About two hours--and multiple trips by Jim to his computer and his phone--Jack presented three names to add to Charlie Eppes and Shawn Spencer: Katherine Gatling, Jack Stewart, and Temperance Brennan.

"This is just a guess," Jim said carefully.

Jack shrugged. "There may be others; I still don't know what their plans are. But these are the ones I would take." Jack's eyes were hard and pitiless. Every time Blair was reminded--vividly, concretely reminded--of the kind of job Jack used to do he felt a little chilled.

Jim wasn't fazed, of course. He just requested more data on the people Jack had selected. Faxes began to arrive--pictures, resumes, forensics reports, medical histories.

Katherine Gatling was blond and a little plump. She as a graduate student in marine biology. Unmarried. Excellent health. She'd been missing since late may.

Jack Stewart was a young doctor, recently moved to Massachusetts. Healthy. Unmarried. At the time between guides. He was taken three days after Gatling.

Temperance Brennan was a forensic anthropologist. She specialized in identifying decomposed human remains. She had brown hair. She was unmarried. Her case was currently classed by the FBI as a drug hit, some kind of message. Apparently, she had been instrumental in reclaiming important evidence from a mass grave in Columbia about a month before her abduction.

About nine o'clock that evening they ran out of information and ideas. Simon had peeked in before leaving, given the project his blessing, and extracting a promise of an update in the morning. Dinner had been left-over Wonderburger and sandwiches from the machine in the breakroom. Jim looked distant and grave. Jack looked worn; at least ten years older than he actually was. Enough.

"Let's call it a night," he whispered to Jim. "We need to be fresh in the morning."

Jim tried to put up a fight. It wasn't that late. More information might come in. Blair only had to look pointedly at Jack, who was hunched over a computer, canted slightly to the left and breathing funny, to make his point.

Jim squatted beside him. "Hey," he said softly. "We won't get any more tonight. Even in this time zone we're into the night shift. Where did you park?"

Jack dredged up a tired half-smile. "At the college. I didn't take my car to the restaurant, so I drafted Mike for a ride here." Blair was secretly relieved. Jack was clearly in no shape to drive.

It seemed simple enough to give him a lift home, but presented with Jim's truck, he laughed. "You're kidding," he said. "That's the new truck?"

"You know," Jim said, "The list of people I'll let laugh at my truck is very short. I'm not even sure you're on it." He was only teasing, though, and he planted himself behind Jack as he climbed in. It was a long way up, and Jack was tired and a little shaky.

As they pulled up in front of Jack's arts and crafts bungalow, Marcia came tearing down the front steps. Blair saw her coming and ducked around the back to retrieve Jack's chair out of the truck bed. Marcia was on the war path, and that just wasn't fun.

"How nice of you to drop back onto the face of the Earth," she said. "Are you going to turn your phone back on, too?"

Jack, scooting to the edge of the seat, sighed. "It ran out of power. I was planning to charge it this afternoon at my office, but I spend the afternoon at the police station instead."

"Oh, yes. I know. Joel told me when I called him, frantic because you were a missing person."

Jim, tired and irritated himself, began to say, "If you knew where he was--"

"Oh, yes. If I knew where he was, why worry? After all, you've taken such good care of him!"

Jack reached out, caught her arm. "We got a break on the bracket case. He's abducting sentinels--"

"So what?" she asked icily. "Oh my god. Tell me you're not being stupid enough to help them?"

"Marcia--"

"You know what he is!" she hissed. "Lee Brackett will eat these two infants for breakfast. Any help you're giving them will just get them killed."

"Now wait a minute--" Jim began. He made the mistake of trying to slip between them. Marcia clawed her hand and reached out to do something painful to him.

Jack managed to intercept her, nearly sliding out of the truck in the process. "Please," he gasped. "I really can't do this now. I'm sorry."

Marcia was borderline irrational at this point. She wouldn't let Jim touch her partner, so it was Blair who helped her ease Jack out of the truck and into his chair. "I'm sorry," Blair whispered, apologizing to everyone. "Do you need any help?"

"Possibly," she answered icily, taking possession of the chair and heading it toward the house. "But since there isn't any actual help available, I'll manage."

Blair took a step after them, but Jim snared him at the waist and held him still. "Don't," he whispered. "I can--I can understand. You were right before. When you said something must be wrong."

"What happened? I don't understand--"

"I think," Jim whispered, "he got too tired to sit properly, which made it more work to breathe. That's why he folded so fast. I didn't recognize...." Jim sighed miserable and leaned against Blair's back. "I just screwed up big time, Chief."

"Well. But me, too."

Jim didn't say anything on the ride home until they turned onto Prospect. Then he said carefully, "Sandburg. Marcia may be right."

"Um. About which part?"

"We don't know what Brackett is doing. I haven’t even been a sentinel for two years. I could be leading you into a really bad situation."

"Well, obviously it's a bad situation--" Blair began. The statement that followed that thought was such a surprise, though, that it stopped him cold. "Wow," he said.

Jim parked the car and turned off the engine. "What?" he asked.

"I always thought--I mean, I watched Naomi try to save the world my whole life. And I watched her fail, and I swore, man, one person at a time. That's all I was going to do, one person at a time. Except. I'm a cop's guide. And it's not just about saving you."

"Sandburg, you're a guide, not a cop. You aren't responsible. It's not your job."

"It's our job."

Jim sighed, staring out the front window into the darkness. "I joined the army to get away from home. After the army, there weren’t a lot of good choices, not for me, not then. But--Blair--you--you have other choices."

"Do I? I can help these people. Five missing sentinels, at least. And their families. Nobody but us is working this case. How can I choose not to help them? It's not what I expected, but--"

"Marcia may be right, Sandburg. I, I have to admit--" Jim took a deep breath. Blair wished he could see his face. "Brackett--"

"Jim. You're not ignorant and sick now. Brackett is dangerous and well trained, but so are you. And you're a sentinel. And you've got a competent guide. Marcia is burnt out. And she thinks we're idiots."

"Are you sure?"

"Do you think they're still alive? Shawn and Charlie and Catherine and the others? If they're still alive, then we have to try to find them."

"Yeah. All right. You're right." Jim took a deep breath. "We have to be smart about this. We have to be careful."

"I'm down with that," Blair nodded, hoped that was reassuring.

Still looking out the front, Jim reached out with his right hand. Blair took it, squeezed. "You okay, man?"

"I'm not sure," Jim admitted. "I think I just want to get some sleep, you know?"

***  
Tuesday

When Blair came out of the shower the next morning, Jim was scrambling eggs. Blair ducked into his bedroom long enough to throw his clothes on, and when he came out breakfast was on the table. "You've been up for a while," he said.

Jim nodded, shoveling in his breakfast with efficiency.

"Didn't sleep real well, huh?"

"Wow. Those intuitive leaps are impressive--" Jim began testily. He stopped suddenly and lowered his eyes. "Look, how do I--? I mean, is there a formula for telling you I've got a headache?"

"No," Blair said gently. "You just tell me." He waited for a moment, but Jim just looked edgy and embarrassed. "You want some help?"

Jim nodded firmly. "Please," he said.

Blair stood up and walked around to stand behind him. "Start by not bolting your food?" he suggested. "That's not helping."

"It's not anything," Jim said, already distancing from his request for help. "It's just stress."

"Well, obviously it's stress." Blair palmed the back of Jim's neck for a moment, then slid his fingers up into the hair, searching for muscle tension or puffiness.

"Can't I just take something?"

"Well, you could. You don't have adverse reactions to ibuprofen. But that would just get rid of the symptom." Blair combed his fingers down, pushing against Jim's scalp.

"That's kind of the point," Jim said.

"If we leave the stress alone, it will just come out somewhere else." He slid his fingers down Jim's neck toward his shoulders until he found a knot.

"Stress...is kind of unavoidable right now, Chief."

Blair pressed the knot under the heel of his hand. No pinching, no thumbs. "Breathe. Again. Jim, I'm not going to tell you this is just another case." Another knot, just inside the shoulder blade. "But you've got really good coping skills. Some people chose to do really terrible things. And some people have really terrible things happen to them. But you don't bring that home and--and make those bad things part of you. I've been watching you for a year now. You can handle this."

"Except I'm not. Hence the really nice backrub."

Blair laughed and hugged him gently. "Nah. It's just easier and faster to use the guide. A shortcut." He gently pulled Jim's shoulders back, trying to stretch that second knot. "Breathe."

When they got to the station, detailed reports on the four of the missing sentinels were waiting, and the fifth was coming off the fax machine from the FBI. Before they could sit down with the casenotes, Simon called them in for a meeting. "Let's go. Tell me what you've got." When they finished, he looked back and forth between them. "So. Basically, you've got zip, am I right? The victims have nothing in common except that they're healthy sentinels. There is absolutely no evidence connecting the crimes--"

"It's the right MO. And we've got Brackett's description on the Spencer case," Jim protested.

Simon shook his head. "You're looking for zebras here, boys." He picked up one of the files. "Katherine Gatling," he read. "Her father is the US ambassador to Taiwan. This is a political thing."

"A political thing. For weeks. With no demands reported," Jim ground out.

"It went bad--"

"And no body found? Come on, Simon. Brackett's been doing something for months now. We knew that. This is it."

"All right. Fine. What's your next step?"

"We're...working on that."

"Well, while you're working on that, I want you on the armored car thing."

"Since when is that a major crime?" Jim said irritably.

"Since it involved two million dollars. I want you to go over the truck and the scene and take a look at the neighborhood. The chief set up a neighborhood command post. We're working with the media, the local churches, offering a week-long amnesty period. Anyone can turn in money, no questions asked."

Jim's mouth thinned to a sour line, but he made no protest. "I'll check it out," he said.

"Jim, I want you to find out what's going on. If this wasn't a freak accident, I want to know who did it and why."

Jim went to get a copy of the file from Rafe, who'd been handling the case for the last two days. Blair made a quick call to the anthro department to check on Jack. He wasn't there. He had called in sick and canceled morning office hours, although the workstudy manning the phones said he was expected to be in class that afternoon.

Hell. That was bad. Jack didn't cut office hours casually.

On the other hand, Marcia would do it without hesitation if she thought he needed the rest. And she wouldn't let him come back in the afternoon if he wasn't doing all right.

While Blair was staring at Jim's phone and wondering how worried he should be, it rang. "Detective Ellison's desk," he answered automatically.

"Hi, Blair. It's Stephen."

"Oh, hi. Jim will be back in a second."

"You can probably answer my question. What's a good birthday present for a sentinel?"

Blair blinked. "It's not Jim's birthday," he protested, suddenly worried that he was wrong.

To his relief, Stephen answered, "No, it's not. It's Rodney's. I stopped by the university to drop off the latest set of specs on the maglev, and John invited me to the surprise party. The note he slipped me said, 'gift not necessary,' but...you know. I really need to do some sucking up. He's grumpy about the space allotment."

"Right," Blair said. The remodel on the entertainment center had started with the race track, but the plans for updating the amusement park next door were already being assembled. Stephen had made quite a coup in recruiting an engineer of Rodney McKay's status. He'd had inside information; Rodney wanted to design rides badly enough to do the work for cheap. The maglev was his current obsession: as silent and smooth as a water ride, as fast and elaborate as a roller coaster. But even eager, Rodney was notoriously difficult to work with. "Okay. You want the most expensive chocolate you can find. But listen: nuts and caramels, not fruit fillings. Sometimes the machinery gets cross-contaminated, and Rodney has dangerous sensitivities. If you buy him something questionable, you'll go on John's shit list."

"Right. Thanks. I owe you." He rang off, and Blair buried his face in his hands. The party was tonight. He'd forgotten. Blair had bought the gift already. And going would probably be good for Jim, get his mind off Brackett. But Jim wouldn't want to go, not while he was worried about at least five missing sentinels.

Jim certainly didn't want to fool around with a stupid armored car accident. He was radiating irritation as he came back with the file. "Hop to, Chief. Let's go," he snapped as he breezed by the desk.

Jim ground his teeth all the way to the armored car office. He looked over the building and garage, got a copy of the duty roster, interviewed the guards. He wasn't being very serious about it, though; he talked to them all together and didn't bring them in to the station. "So I see there was a last minute schedule change?"

A glance passed between them. "Well, Westerberg was supposed to be on the job, but I guess he called in sick. Food poisoning, wasn't it?"

This was supported by nods from the other two. "Yeah. He ate something bad last night"

"So, uh, I got the late call, and I met the truck here after the guys picked up the load of money."

Jim nodded and tuned to one of the others. "And which one of you was in the back?"

A different man waved his hand. "I was. We took a hell of a ride. Smashed in the guardrail. Impact popped the door right open."

Jim looked him over narrowly. "Hmm," he said, sounding unimpressed. "You couldn't stop the money from flying out?"

"Detective, it was all I could do to keep myself from flying out."

"Right," Jim said, looking them all over. "Thanks." He nodded pleasantly and walked out.

Blair found himself hurrying after him. "What?" he asked, as he caught up to Jim in the parking lot. "That's it?"

Jim snorted. "That's plenty. They're all lying."

"So--they were in on it? In on what? They didn't get the money." Robbery gone wrong? How would this robbery have gone right?

"I don't know yet. Maybe they're covering incompetence. Maybe they were drinking or something. Maybe something really nasty. Something, though. I can smell the lies."

The next thing to check out was the accident site and the neighborhood below the overpass that the money had blown into. Southtown was a poor neighborhood--more than poor, destitute: graffiti, scattered trash, a couple homeless people sleeping in the alley. Jim stalked through it with grim resolve, his eyes expressionlessly cataloging things only a sentinel could see. Whenever Blair got more than two feet away, Jim's hand latched onto his upper arm and reined him in.

At the unused storefront where the PD had set up its amnesty headquarters, Jim checked in with Detective Rafe, who was in a blue uniform and looking bored. There were more policemen inside than locals, and the small firesafes they'd brought to transport the money in were mostly standing empty in the corner of the room.

Jim scowled. "Well. This is going well," he said.

Rafe looked slightly defensive. "We passed out flyers all over the neighborhood. We've urged people to come forward. You're pretty much looking at the response."

"How much money been turned in?"

"About twelve thousand dollars. I'd say we're about as popular as the ice concession on the Titanic."

Experimentally, Blair started to wander toward the table where a cute little uniformed cop with curly brown hair was waiting (boredly) to make out receipts for people turning in found cash. He managed two steps before Jim absently reached out and caught him by the collar. Blair was willing to bet he wasn't even aware he was doing it.

Rafe lifted one of the small cases onto the table and opened it, revealing a neat stack of money. "It's not a major crime. It's five or six hundred petty crimes."

Jim reached out and pulled one of the bills out of its rubberbanded packet. "This was supposed to be old money...." he said.

"It looks pretty beat-up to me," Blair said.

"It doesn't smell like old money." Jim latched one hand around Blair's wrist. "It doesn't smell like money." He began to pull bills out of the packet, his eyes intent. "It doesn't smell like used money, there's no old sweat on it....It doesn't really look like used money." He was stroking one of the bills between his fingers, zoned and probably on the edge of slipping out of contact completely. "Anybody got a hundred dollar bill?"

Rafe laughed. The other cops--who had gathered in a loose circle to watch the department sentinel work his gig--shook their heads. Feeling a little embarrassed, Blair produced his emergency hundred and slid it into Jim's hand.

Jim stared at the hundred for long seconds. He folded it in half and rubbed it against itself and smelled it. He wadded it into a ball and unfolded it and looked at it again. Without a word, he passed Blair's bill back and began to spread the bills out on the table, sometimes pausing to crumple or smell them.

Suddenly, Blair was struck with a bolt of horror. He grabbed Jim's hands and tried to pull him away from the table. "Stop! Stop! Jim. They're hundred dollar bills."

"No, they're not."

Bodily, Blair got between his partner and the money. "There was a study--or maybe it was an urban myth--most hundred dollar bills have traces of cocaine on them."

"They're counterfeit. They're not real."

"Jim, get away--" Blair had left his backpack in the truck: no baby wipes. Maybe the water hadn't been turned off.

Jim blinked at him, took a deep breath, focused his eyes, caught Blair by the shoulders. "Chief. What? No. It's okay. It's not real money. It's all counterfeit. And it's not really used. There's nothing on it but expensive ink."

Blair let go and stepped back. "Oh," he said. The bolt of adrenalin was still racing around in his blood. It was easy to keep Jim away from recreational drugs when they were packed in evidence bags and clearly labeled, but that didn't mean Blair ever forgot the fact that even small amounts of cocaine or narcotics could be deadly to sentinels if they had their senses wide open. Blair very nearly hugged Jim with relief, but at that moment Rafe said, "Wait. It's all counterfeit? You're sure?"

"Here, smell it." Jim scooped up a handful. "Real old money is pretty rank. This paper was aged in an oven or a washing machine or something. And here, look. The fraying at the edges, it's not soft enough--"

Rafe shook his head. "Sorry, Jim. It all looks the same to me."

Jim looked around at the small crowd that had gathered--seven cops and two elderly men who were turning money in. He slowly squared his shoulders. "Bring everybody in--the three guys from the truck, the guy who called in with food poisoning, the owner of the company, and whoever initially loaded that truck. Where's the truck? Did we log it into evidence?"

Rafe shook his head. "It was a traffic accident."

"Right. Okay, Chief. Let's go find that truck."

The armored car company had a contract with a specialized body shop downtown. They had no trouble pointing out the tire they'd removed the day before. Jim laid it on the hood of his truck and examined it in the patchy sunlight. "What have you got?" Blair asked, trying to see under Jim's arm.

"Something. I'm not sure what. Petroleum jelly?" He brushed a gloved finger against the tear and touched it to his tongue. "Yeah. And I think I see--"

"Jim! Do not taste evidence." A couple of months before, Jack had handed Blair a copy of The Human Crime Lab: Sentinels in Forensic Analysis, a compilation of articles on how to make the best (and safest) use of enhanced human senses in police work. It was something Blair should have found himself--and months sooner--but he'd never expected to be a police guide, and he'd initially been distracted by trying to teach a late bloomer everything there was to know about being a sentinel in the first place. One of the chapters had spent five pages describing why no one (but particularly not people with heightened senses) should ever put evidence in their mouth. Blair had gotten Jim to read the chapter, but he refused to take it seriously.

Case in point: "Don't worry. I’m pretty sure--wow. That's weird. I have no idea what that is."

Blair threw up his arms. "Christ, Ellison--" He stopped as he realized Jim was laughing at him.

"Come on, give me a little credit, here, Chief. I'm not going to taste something really dangerous. You're the one who keeps telling me I should trust my perceptions."

Blair firmly shut his mouth and turned away. He was seriously pissed off. This was not a game, and god-knows-what kind of toxin wasn't something to play around with. He'd worked damn hard to get Jim healthy.

Behind him, Jim sighed. "Okay, I apologize. All right? I'm sorry."

Blair took a couple of deep breaths, forcing his jaw to unclench. "Nah, man. Don't pay any attention to me. I'm just...edgy, you know?"

"Yeah. I know. Me, too."

Blair wondered what he should say to that. This was a great case, and normally, maybe they would be having a ball with all this weirdness, but all Blair could think about was Lee Brackett and five missing sentinels. And if that was all Blair could think about, Jim must be climbing the walls.

"Never mind," Jim said. "Take a look at this. I think there's some kind of wire or metal sliver embedded in the rubber. Let me you have your pocketknife."

It was almost one when they made pulled into the police garage. Blair was acutely aware that Jim hadn't yet take time for lunch. He was also aware that missing one meal wasn't the end of the world, and that he tended to obsess over food. Jim was determined to show the tire to Joel.

Joel poked at the tear with a swab and shrugged. "That's one heck of a blow out. Petroleum jelly? You know, it sounds like a potassium chloride device. All you have to do is add the chemical with the jelly, set it off with an electrical charge. You wouldn't need much to blow out a tire, and it wouldn't leave much trace."

"And that could be detonated with a remote triggering device?"

"Absolutely," Joel said cheerfully. "Got a suspect?"

"Three or four. Rafe's working on that end of things. He should have pulled them in by now. If we get a search warrant--"

"Right. I'll go along, see what I can find."

"Thanks." Jim tuned the tire, the swabs, and the baggie with the tiny fragment of wire in it over to the lab and went to Major Crime to check in with Simon.

They found Gus and Mr. Eppes waiting for them. Jim cursed very quietly and nudged Blair into the lead. Blair put on his best serious-but-competent face and shook both their hands before leading the way into the nearest empty interview room. "Mr. Eppes, it was good of you to stop by, but we don't have anything new, I'm afraid. We're convinced that the cases are related, and we're looking at a multiple kidnapping here, but...."

Alan Eppes closed his eyes. "You haven't convinced anyone else."

Jim winced slightly. "No. Not yet."

They only looked a little angry, and only for a moment before settling into a grim resolution. "I see," Gus said. "Well."

"We're not dropping the case," Blair said quickly. "We don't know what to do next, but we aren't giving up."

"Thank you," Mr. Eppes said stiffly. "At least for trying."

There wasn't much to say after that. Jim made them both promise to call if they came across anything that could shed light on the case. Blair walked them to the elevator. When he got back to the interview room, Jim was leaning over the table with his head resting on his folded arms. Blair walked all the way around him and approached from the other side so that Jim wouldn't feel snuck up on or crowded. "Hey," he said gently.

"What, Blair? What can you do with kidnapped sentinels? If they're healthy enough that that they won't sicken and die....What can you do with them?"

"Breed them. If you've got twenty years and a lot of resources. Clone them, except you wouldn't need the whole body and nobody's cloned a mammal yet. Test them, but they won't perform normally under duress and physical stress. At least...none of the standard tests I can think of....No."

"It's in the brain, mostly, not the sensory organs. Right? They could be doing lobotomies. Or autopsies. Trying to find out what makes us tick."

Ick. "No. Jim--just, no. There are plenty of sentinels who die from natural causes and accidents. They don't need to kidnap autopsy victims--"

"Well, they're taking them for something! Damn it--"

The door popped open and Simon poked his head in. "Hey. Jim. Nice work. Rafe just got one of the armored car guys to roll over on his partners. Good job."

As the door shut, Jim laughed bitterly. "How nice. We've solved the armored car job. Lovely."

The spent the afternoon reading the files on the missing sentinels. Over and over. It didn't tell Blair a darn thing about who might have taken them or why, but it did begin to imagine they as people. Charlie Eppes, brilliant and funny and kind and a little shy. Katherine Gatling, driven and dedicated and quirky. There was a picture of her holding handfuls of algae and laughing. Shawn Spencer, who was either a complete genius or a complete flake, it was hard to tell. In his entire life, he had worked for less than a month with a formally trained guide.

Jack Stewart, who grew up on welfare, but used sentinel memory and his sensory gifts to fly through medical school on scholarships. Temperance Brennan, a workaholic scientist who did the most horrifying, heartbreaking work and never flinched.

All of them intelligent. All of them healthy. All of them Caucasian. Three male, two female. Three of them doing occasional consulting work for law enforcement. Three of them in the biological sciences.

All of them missing.

At five-thirty, Blair looked up and said, "Are we close to making some sort of headway, here?"

Jim sighed. "No," he said.

"Look. We should go to Rodney's party. We need a break, and this really means a lot to John."

Jim closed the file and stood up. "All right," he said. "Fine. Whatever."

"Jim, if staying would--"

"No, you're right. There's no point in staying here. It's not like we're getting anywhere." Jim grabbed his jacket and headed for the door. Cursing inwardly, Blair stumbled after him.

***

They had to stop at the loft to pick up the present Sandburg had gotten. Jim waited in the truck, his fingers tapping on the wheel, while Blair ran upstairs. It had been over a month since any of their missing sentinels had been taken. A recent case, a fresh scene to examine was what they really needed but he couldn't bring himself to wish for another kidnapping and anyway--

It had been over a month. Had they gotten all the sentinels they wanted? Had they done...whatever and now it was all over? Were things just in a different phase now?

Damn. One good lead, just one!

Sandburg tossed the gift onto the seat between them and hopped into the truck. "You okay?"

"Peachy."

It turned out that the protocol for a sentinel surprise party was utter silence. Sheppard had reserved a side room of a restaurant they ate at frequently. The guests could park in the lot--McKay was oblivious enough to other people not to bother noticing their cars--but had to greet each other without words. Jack was there, Marcia and Joel, Stephen, a couple of people from McKay's department at the college.

Jim went to Jack first, opening his mouth to apologize and ask how he was doing. Jack shook his head and held up his hands. Jim let himself be caught and drawn in--and maybe this was better than words, because like this there was no confusion about the fact that Jack was fine and Jim was forgiven.

And in silence, Jim didn't have to say aloud that they had no leads on the case. Jack already knew they'd been searching for Brackett all summer without a single trace, and that all the kidnappings were dead ends.

Jack already knew just how screwed they were.

When Jim looked up, Marcia was watching them, and she didn't need words, either. Jim had brought her best friend home sick and miserable. If there was anyone in the world Jack should have been safe with, it was Jim, and he had let them both down.

She turned away.

Well. An apology wouldn't have helped anyway, even if Jim had been able to make one. You couldn't talk your way out of something you'd behaved yourself into.

"How about our usual table? It's free." McKay. With no one talking, Jim's hearing easily settled on the familiar voice. "Where are we going?"

"Rodney, just go with it."

"Go with what? Oh, my god, that's the party room. John, what have you done? John?"

"Smile and move it, McKay. Look happy."

The door opened and Sheppard propelled McKay through. "Surprise!" everyone whispered. You didn't have to shout at sentinels.

McKay looked both pleased and freaked out. He smiled, but crossed his arms over his chest, refusing to shake anyone's hand with a sentinel finickyness that Jim usually only saw from Adrian Monk. John stayed right behind him, and Rodney seemed to have no hesitation about taking advantage of that reassurance. Every once in a while, Jim saw him cant slightly backward and brush against his partner. Jim wondered if he was so visibly dependant on Blair--or if you had to know something about sentinels to realize what was going on.

The wait staff brought in some starters--platters of pale cheese dip and onion rings and little herbed toasts. This took some of the attention off Rodney, and the conversations that had been suspended for the silence began to pop up around the room.

Stephen came over. As always, the first look he gave Jim was a worried one. "How's it going?" he asked.

Jim shrugged. "Busy. You?"

Stephen grimaced. "About what you'd expect. I mean, you do know what it's like, trying to prosecute a white collar crime? There are lawyers everywhere, looking over everything. And federal investigators, now." Savagely, Stephen scooped up some cheese dip on a bit of bread and bit down. "Two hundred thousand dollars in bad concrete, never mind what it's going to cost to rip it out and replace it. The stock? It's about where you'd expect. And the only bright spot? If I had not been giving Rodney the deluxe tour, trying to convince him what a sleek operation we're running....It would be costing us ten times this. More."

Jim had been the first person Stephen had called, once he had the proof of undercutting in his hands. He'd been furious, almost incoherent. Or what he'd been saying was so weird and complicated that the effect was the same. Curious, Jim had gone out to the race track, getting past the security guard with his badge. Standing in the infield, listening very carefully, Jim had managed to hear the weird popping sound Rodney had described to Stephen. Like breakfast cereal, but softer. So soft that when the wind blew, the sound of its vibration passing over the new railings drowned the crackling out. And wasn’t that strange, because Jim's hearing was much better than McKay's. And yet the soft sound that Jim nearly missed in the silence of night, McKay had heard during the day, with heavy traffic outside and the clatter of workmen and equipment all around him.

"How are you going to come out of it?" Jim asked.

"Possibly with my boss's job, since she was the one skimming money from the track renovation." He glanced over Jim's shoulder and winced slightly. "Happy birthday, Rodney," he said.

Rodney looked confused for a moment. "What? Right, thanks. But have you looked at the specs you brought us today? What's the matter with Steadman, anyway? Is he trying to waste money? And his safety features are a joke."

"Rodney. You know I agree with you. But the law is very clear on--"

"The law is decades out of date," Rodney grumped. "Well, a decade, anyway."

Stephen patted his arm. "We can make an appeal through the courts. It'll take a while, but since it isn't like we're ready to break ground, that won't be a problem. Rodney, relax. Enjoy your birthday."

The long bodied rodent appeared out of nowhere. It raced across the floor, staggered to a stop at Stephen's feet. It fell and lay there, shaking.

Jim wondered if he...ought to do something about it. For it? But none of the animals he'd been seeing lately had seemed to hear him when he talked to them.

The fur on the strange rodent was patchy and dirty. Jim sniffed--surely it would smell rank, the state it was in--but it left no trace in the air.

He didn't remember the conversation he'd lost track of until Stephen was excusing himself to go check out the appetizers. To Jim's surprise, McKay didn't follow him. Instead, he was looking at Jim. "What?" Jim asked, wondering if he'd broken some sentinel etiquette.

"You see it, too," McKay said. His eyes drifted to the floor next to where Stephen had been standing.

Jim looked down. It was gone. "See what?" he asked cautiously.

"The meerkat," McKay answered irritably. "The one that was right there. Don't deny it."

No, Jim wouldn't deny it. He just wasn't sure what he should say. What had he seen? "Like a long, skinny rat with a funny face?"

McKay rolled his eyes. "They're African. Like from the posters. The ones that stand on their hind legs and look cute."

"Oh. Yeah, I guess." He'd wondered what it was.

McKay's eyes were round and his smell was edging toward scared. "Oh my god." He took a step backward. "No. It's just a hallucination. A little brain glitch."

Jim hated to think about what it might be, but his profound ambivalence was just nothing on the frank shock and fear in McKay's eyes. "It can't hurt us," he said.

"Well, obviously. We're--we're dreaming it. It must be something we ate." Except neither of them had eaten yet. "Or breathed."

Jim looked at the place where the animal had been. "We're fine." The creature had been sick or suffering. Meerkat. But Jim and McKay were fine.

"My," McKay stuttered, collected himself, tried again, "My doctor says a lot of us have been seeing animals lately. Even him. It doesn't mean anything bad."

Jim's jaw dropped. He wasn't the only one. That was both reassuring and horrifying. And absolutely fucked up, because nobody--nobody--seemed to understand what it meant. There were sentinels out there in such extremis that their pain was reaching out to sentinels who had never even met them, and nobody had a clue, except for Jim and he didn't know what to do about it--

McKay touched his shoulder. "This isn't your first time, is it? I mean, you're not going to freak out, are you?"

"No," Jim managed. "I'm not going to freak out."

"That's good. Because freaking out always makes it worse. Except, I guess, you've already figured that out."

They looked at each other for a moment. Then McKay nervously looked around the room. Apparently, there were no more non-existent animals, because he nodded in satisfaction and excused himself and headed over to the hors d'oeuvres.

Jim wondered if you could do some kind of survey; find out who had seen animals and what kind and if they'd said anything useful. But no. It would take too long. And anyway, getting a straight answer on animals was harder than getting a straight answer on sex. Even as matter-of-fact as Fraser was, he didn’t talk about them. And mostly, both sentinels and guides tended to be embarrassed or afraid or pretending nothing was happening.

He wondered who the meerkat was--Epps? Stewart?--and hoped that a spirit animal racing across the room was proof that whoever it was was still alive.

"Hey, are you okay?" Jim hadn't even noticed Sandburg coming over. He nodded. Sandburg looked at him critically. "Right. But you're looking a little peaked. You've been under a lot of stress. Are you coming down with something--?" He reached out to brush the back of his hand on Jim's forehead.

Jim ducked. "If I were sick, I wouldn't be here, sharing my germs with two fragile sentinels and Jack. Would I?"

Maybe he was trying to pick a fight. He did feel almost disappointed when Sandburg didn't rise to the bait but only nodded sadly and patted his arm. "How about we get something to eat," he suggested.

Jim didn't argue. He took the small plate of snacks that Sandburg put in his hand. Over at the small table where they had piled the gifts, Rodney was declaring that it was better to open presents now rather than wait until after the main course.

The first package held a small crystal bowl from one of Rodney's engineering colleagues. Useless, but beautiful. Very beautiful, actually, it did things with the light. Rodney was smiling when he put it down, and the giver was looking very relieved.

What happened next was a lot like one of Sandburg's split-attention exercises. Two songs playing at once or two people talking to him and one of them lying, or the headphones that told a different story in each year. Except this time there was Rodney ten feet away, unwrapping three pounds of expensive coffee beans that Sandburg had given him outside, and a blue dream on the inside.

It wasn't a jungle this time or the soft Canadian forests, but an expanse of glittering sand. A beach, and on it, struggling, heaving, helpless, an orca. Jim was standing close, and it was big. He could feel heat from its body, see the tension on the surface of the skin as it dried. It was looking at him.

"I don't know how to help you," Jim said. Obviously, it needed to be in the water, but the animal was a long way up the beach. Experimentally, Jim laid his hands along the flank and pushed. Nothing, of course. He couldn't shift it.

In the outer realm, Rodney was stumbling awkwardly over his thanks to Marcia. She wasn't any more graceful about receiving the thanks than he was at giving it.

A hound bayed, and the dog that Jim had seen pacing him in the morgue came racing across the beach, kicking up a shower of sand. Barking, it ran in circles around the orca. Jim looked around for something that would help, but there was only barren beach and the pound of surf a dozen feet from the closest part of the whale.

The dog began to dig along the whale's flank. Growling, snarling, tearing at the sand, it began to dig a trench. Cautiously, Jim stepped closer. To his surprise, there was a trickle of water in the trench. Dropping to his hands and knees, Jim began to dig, too. The sand went from dry to wet to puddle. Yes, there was water here, but the digging was slow and the orca was huge.

The hound threw back its head and howled. It seemed, somehow, to break the beach. Jim found himself falling backwards as the sand gave way. For a moment--just a moment--he was floundering in water, and then the blue dream was gone and he was standing in the restaurant watching McKay open the imported chocolates Stephen had given him.

The plate in Jim's hand tilted and one of his onion rings slid onto the floor. Jim quickly adjusted his grip and caught himself on the back of a nearby chair. He blinked repeatedly, trying to recapture the dream, but it was gone.

The chocolates slid out of McKay's hand and thunked on the floor. The color drained from his face, and at the same time his heart began to race so fast that some of the beats might have been out of order. He fell backwards into the table of gifts before sliding to the floor.

Sheppard was the closest to him, but, caught by surprise, he was too slow to stop McKay from ending in a heap on the floor. He followed his partner down, hands ranging swiftly over his body, searching for injury or external symptoms. Rodney was conscious, but incoherent. He fought Sheppard feebly, gulping for air. He didn’t respond to Sheppard's attempts to quiet him. Without looking, Sheppard shoved the box of candy across the floor to one of McKay's colleagues. "Read me the ingredients."

"But--he didn’t even open it," the man protested.

"Read the damn box!" Sheppard's voice had turned to ice. "Jack. His kit is in his briefcase."

Jack was already moving. He pulled a small, blue, plastic box out of the briefcase and tossed it neatly to Marcia, who passed it to John.

"Sugar, whole milk, cocoa butter, chocolate liquor, lecithin--"

"Rash, but no swelling. Rodney, tell me what the hell is going on."

"Dairy cream, pecans, cashews--"

Sheppard pulled McKay up so that he was sitting braced against Sheppard's shoulder. Jack, who had had to go the long way around the tables, swung down onto the floor beside them and took some of McKay's weight. He hiked McKay's shirt up, bearing his shoulder while Sheppard opened the little box and opened one of six color-coded syringes.

"Blair," Jack said calmly, "Get Jim and Marcia out of here. And take everyone else with you."

At once, Sandburg put an arm around Jim's waist, caught Marcia's wrist and, without waiting to see if he was followed, propelled them from the room.

The main floor of the restaurant was fairly crowded. Sandburg led them around the corner, into the short, tiled hallway that housed the bathrooms. Looking horrified and embarrassed, the other guests formed a silent clump behind them.

Marcia jerked away from Sandburg's grasp and folded her arms over her breasts. Her face was blank and her eyes were hard. Almost timidly, Joel laid a hand on her shoulder. "Do I need to take you home?" he asked.

"No," she said shortly.

"But--Jack wanted you away. You shouldn't be listening."

She spun on him. "An allergic reaction is not contagious!" She wrestled her temper down and explained, "Being a guide is very difficult. You can't control all the factors. You can't predict the outcomes. Sometimes nothing they do helps. So they get really anxious. They're superstitious. They think being fragile is some kind of communicable disease."

"To be fair," Sandburg said tightly, "some sentinels can worry into a stress-related--"

The patience she showed to Joel did not extend to Sandburg: "Right," she said with open contempt. "And you'd have something to worry about if either Jim or I had a history of that. Jack is being an over-protective pain in the ass, and you are just being stupid. They could have used Jim, at least, in there. He's good with bodies--"

Joel snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her close. She sighed miserably. "Aw, damn it, McKay."

One of the engineers cleared his throat awkwardly. "Is it possible that he actually reacted to something inside a sealed box?"

Sandburg started to pace back and forth across the tiny hallway. "A sentinel could, yeah. If the sensitivity was severe enough."

"Oh, lord. I left his gift on my desk. I left it alone. Could someone have tampered with it? Could this be deliberate?"

Sandburg was shaking his head. From under a shower of curly hair he said, "Theoretically, but they'd have to know his list--"

Again the engineer said, "Everyone knows his list. He gives us a two-page handout at the department meeting every semester."

Stephen looked completely horrified. Jim stepped in before it could go any farther. "There's no point. I've been following the case, a little. They don’t need his testimony. The evidence is all in paperwork and bank accounts and lab results. Nobody in your office has anything to gain by poisoning him now. The day before he visited, yeah. But not now."

Marcia gasped softly and turned her face toward the private room. Jim re-oriented his hearing, ignoring the clatter of cutlery and the patter of voices and centered his attention on the familiar voices. McKay's was making noise, sort of. Not words. Sheppard was spitting broken instructions at Jack. None of it made sense. "What?" Jim asked.

"He's seizing," she whispered.

Blair snatched Jim's phone off his belt and thrust it into his hands. "Call 911," he instructed, running off to help.

It took four and a half minutes for the ambulance to arrive. Joel went out to meet them and take them in the shorter route through the side door. Stephen and the engineers stood silently, the engineers staring at the floor, and Stephen sneaking glances at Jim. It wasn't hard to guess what he was thinking. Stephen hadn't been around in the days when Jim averaged slightly more than one trip to the emergency room a month, but he knew enough to be able to guess that it had been pretty bad.

It's not an illness, Sandburg always said. And he was right. He was. But sometimes it felt like it was.

Ten minutes after they arrived, the medics took McKay out on a stretcher. Sheppard was right beside them. Jack came up to Joel and asked him to give Marcia a ride home, since he was following along to the hospital.

"Is there anything we can do?" Sandburg asked him.

"Handle things here," Jack said. "I--I'll call if--"

"If you need anything," Sandburg finished for him. And then--weirdly, because he didn't usually--he leaned down and hugged Jack hard.

Jim followed them out and watched the ambulance leave. Then he went back to the site of the abandoned birthday party and began to search through the gifts. One at a time he lifted the packages and sniffed them. The coffee smelled like coffee. The chocolate smelled like chocolate. The little lamp meant for burning olive oil...didn't really smell like anything but the cotton wick, which was a hard smell to notice.

Sandburg went to he waiter to settle the bill. He just handed over his emergency credit card, not worried about when he'd get paid back. When he returned, he surveyed the wreckage and asked, "Well? Any sign of what caused it?"

"Everything smells just they way it's supposed to, Chief."

He frowned. "Maybe I should toss it all, anyway?"

"McKay would kill you. Let's save it and ask John, later."

He nodded and began piling up the gifts. "Jim...you didn't notice anything did you? Before--? I mean, did anything unusual happen?"

"Not to him," Jim muttered.

"Huh?" he glanced up.

"I had a massive audiovisual hallucination. Right before he went down. I dunno. Maybe it was a warning...." But that didn't sound right. The vision on the beach wasn't something that was going to happen in a minute, it was something that was happening right then. "I don't think he saw it, though. I mean he kept right on talking and opening presents."

From somewhere, Sandburg had found a plastic bag to stuff the presents into. "Why would he see your 'hallucination?'"

Jim debated how much he wanted to talk about this now. "Fraser and I went to the same place, once."

Sandburg nodded and gathered up the rest of the gifts.

***  
When the elevator doors opened, Jim pushed Blair behind him and drew his gun. Gaping, Blair drew breath to ask what the hell was going on, but Jim motioned him to silence. Still carrying the sack containing Rodney's presents, Blair followed his partner down the hall to the door of 307, which was ajar.

Jim paused for a moment, head canted, listening. Without warning, he sprung, tossing the door open and pointing his gun at the head of a dark-haired man who was sitting on the couch, reading. The invader looked up irritably and said, "You don't have any good snacks. You should go shopping."

"Keep your hands where I can see them," Jim growled.

Staying motionless, the invader said, "That's my ID on the coffee table."

Jim approached slowly, the gun never wavering. Blair followed, keeping out of the way. He picked up the slim, leather case and flipped it open. "FBI?" he read incredulously. "You're kidding."

He passed the case to Jim, who examined it carefully. "Sealie Booth," he read. "Brennan's guide." He holstered his gun and tossed the ID back at Booth just hard enough to sting. "You should have called for an appointment." A stranger in the house was a sure way to unsettle a sentinel. A guide couldn't have done this by accident. Looking at Jim's face, Blair guessed that it had worked.

Agent Booth smiled icily. "What can I say, Detective? A small-town flatfoot nosing around in Dr. Brennan's private affairs gets my full and undivided attention."

Jim put his gun away. "I'm sorry. Have I interfered with your progress on the case? Oh, right. You haven't made any."

"You can either explain what you're doing collecting information on Dr. Brennan's case here, or we can do it down at the federal building. I'm not picky."

"So," Blair said brightly, "Can I get anybody coffee?"

Jim said, "We believe her abduction is related to that of several other missing sentinels who were taken in May and June of this year."

That seemed to surprise Booth. He shook his head slowly. "No," he said. "None of our evidence is indicating it's part of a pattern, or that there are any other people missing along with her. She was taken as retribution for her work identifying--"

Jim was shaking his head. "I'll show you."

A copy of the brief version of the case notes was in Blair's backpack. While Blair made coffee, Jim laid out the descriptions and abductions of the other victims. Before he was half finished, Booth was shaking his head. "It doesn't make sense," he protested. "Except for being healthy sentinels...they have nothing in common."

Visibly keeping his temper I check, Jim said, "Why don't you humor me, and tell me your story."

Agent Booth paused for a long time, his eyes on the small, black and white faxed photo of Dr. Brennan that had been in the abbreviated file. "We were at a conference," he said slowly. "At a little lodge that backed up on a state park. It was desert, you know. Hot, and not a lot of green." He paused, some of the anger slipping away to be replaced with helpless resignation. "We'd had a fight. All the way down from the room. Bones needed a vacation. I wanted a vacation. Hawaii, maybe. Or a cruise, you know? If she didn't want to spend that much time on the plane. She'd been having headaches. She needed a break. But she wanted to go to Poland."

"On vacation?" Blair asked, surprised. That was a long time to spend in a plane. What sentinel would do that for fun?

"No. They'd just found a mass grave there. Maybe thirty years old. Something left over from the communists, maybe. She'd been invited in, and she wanted to go. I was angry. I told her, if she wanted to go that badly, she could go without me. And she stalked off, went out onto the patio, instead of into the meeting room."

He stopped there. Jim had his patient interrogator face on. He waited, barely breathing, for Agent booth to continue. Finally, he said, "After I calmed down, I followed her out. Bones was struggling with a tall woman. High cheek bones. Fair skin. Impossibly black hair. I pulled my gun and my badge--and something hard hit me from behind." He stopped again. From reading the file, Blair knew how this story would end, but still, it was all he could do not to jump up shouting for him to go on. "It wasn't much of a fight. The man was behind me, but he was almost my size and as well trained. He tossed me off the patio into the ground, about twelve feet. I broke my left leg in four places. They didn't leave any prints. Nobody got a description. Nobody saw their car. Bones--" He stopped, changed direction. "She's probably in an unmarked grave somewhere." He shut the file in front of him. "You're chasing phantoms, Detective. This--doesn't even make any sense." He looked Jim over slowly. "Do whatever you want, I don't care. Just don't get in my way."

He stood up, retrieved his ID from the table, and left. He was limping, badly favoring the left leg. He shut the door behind him.

"Wow," Blair whispered. "What the hell was that?"

Jim sighed. "He was really hoping we were on to something, Chief, that's all. Imagine his disappointment in discovering that we're a pair of conspiracy theory nuts."

"Oh."

Jim locked the front door, then went to the kitchen and retrieved a broom. The loft was, as always, pretty tidy, but Jim had had his home invaded, and he'd probably spend the next half hour or so getting rid of that touched-by-strangers feeling. Blair wondered if he should help or if Jim would feel better doing it himself. He was just getting ready to give in a wipe down the counters in the kitchen when his cell phone rang.

It was Jack. "How's Jim?" he asked without preamble.

Blair looked over to where Jim was re-tidying all the magazines and art on the coffee table. "He's fine. Why?"

"We just got off the phone with Rodney's doctor. At the same time Rodney went down, so did eight of his other patients. No warning. No precipitating event. Just--collapse. Rodney was the worst case so far, but Sam doesn't have any explanation...."

"Jim's fine," Blair said firmly. Jim had stopped tidying and was following the conversation from across the room. "How's Rodney?"

"Shocky," Jack said. "But conscious and coherent, which is great. Pissed about missing the party. I'll probably go home in another hour of so, if he's stays stable. There's nothing I can do for them here."

"That's good," Blair said.

"Yeah, it is. It...scared the crap out of me, Blair. But--we don't know what did this or who else is vulnerable. You need to stay close to Jim."

"Right. Got it. Don't worry."

"Don't worry? Blair, sentinels in five different states collapsed simultaneously. This has never happened before and we don’t know why it happened now. Don't worry? I dearly wish I had something to do besides worry." He rang off, and Blair stared at the phone. Jack was completely freaked out. There was no other word for it. Blair hadn't realized that Jack could be freaked out.

Jim lightly touched Blair's arm. "Chief? Any of your books on religion explain how to get a vision on purpose?"

Blair blinked. "Um, yeah. Sure. Why?"

"I need to borrow one."

"Okay, sure. But, Jim, you know you only have to ask, man. I'll help--"

Jim smiled sadly. "You'll only tell me the techniques that are safe." He seemed to brace himself for Blair's angry explosion.

Blair gulped, surprised himself that there was no furious explosion forthcoming. "Well," he said, "how about we just try the safe ones first and see where we go from there." He knew where this was coming from. Jim had a vision right before Rodney took a header for the floor. He clearly thought the two events were connected, and maybe he was right. "You know 'dangerous' doesn't necessarily mean 'more effective.' And if--if we have to use more extreme measures--we'll talk about that later, okay?" And it wasn't a lie. Although Blair had four years of training that said that nothing was worth endangering your sentinel...that wasn't true. Some things were worth risk. Some things were even worth loss.

Jim nodded gratefully. "Okay," he said. "What do we try first?"

"Circular breathing."

"Oh. Wonderful."

"Jim, it's fast, it doesn't require any special equipment, it's easy to learn, it has a fast recovery time, it works--"

"And it's so safe that last February when Marcia was so sick we were all sure she would probably die, Jack had her doing it three times a week."

"And it worked so well that she's been able to go back to work. Jim. Trust me. This first."

***

When Jim, clean and warm from the shower, came back into the living room, Sandburg had already set up the nest on the floor. A couple of towels for cushioning, a pillow, a lit candle. Jim relaxed his jaw, squared his shoulders, and crossed the room as though he was completely confident.

Sandburg finished turning off the lights and sat down on the floor beside the nest. "Ready?" he asked, fussing with the nest.

Jim didn't let himself hesitate. He lay down on the floor and let his hands rest palm-up beside his body. "All set," he said.

Sandburg loosened the drawstrings on Jim's sweats and then gently brushed his palm over Jim's belly. "You're going to breathe from here," he said. "It's going to be fairly fast. Inhale and exhale need to be the same length."

"I've done this before," it sounded sharp and impatient; could Jim be any more transparently anxious?

Turning to lie down on his side with his mouth close to Jim's ear, Blair whispered, "If you mess it up, it's no big deal. You hyperventilate yourself into a headache, we take a break, and then we try something else. No risk. Nothing to worry about."

Right, yeah. Pattern breathing was just a technique. A skill. Something you learned, like cleaning a rifle or making spaghetti sauce.

The first time Lee had tried to teach Jim a breathing pattern, they had ended up on the floor...about here, actually...with Jim pinned down in an armlock and Lee's sweaty hand clamped over Jim's mouth and nose. Even with Blair here beside him, the memory of panic and helplessness danced around the present moment.

"Jim. Door number two is I reserve the sensory deprivation tank over at the college. It'll take about three days to get scheduled, but you'll be seeing things in under an hour. Pretty much guaranteed."

Three days was too long. Jim shook his head.

"Door number three is we drive out into the mountains and sit you under a tree until sleep deprivation and/or hunger make the gods pity you and send you a vision. Say, twenty-four...thirty six hours."

Jim swallowed. "What about drugs?" he asked. "I'm not talking about anything made in a laboratory. But. I know there are options."

"Sure. There are herbs and mushrooms that will give you visions. Some of them are even legal. But Jim, you have to learn to use those. They're not a shortcut to spirituality. And...they're really not safe for sentinels. You can't work on the case from a hospital."

Jim realized he was holding on to Blair's arm. He'd have to let go for this to work. He dropped his hands to the floor and took the first breath. The others followed in a swift--almost mechanical--rising and falling. Blair had been telling the truth; it wasn't complicated. Ruthlessly fast and harsh, yes, but the rhythm was easy to find and, though he'd done it only once, his body remembered and fell into the pattern easily.

It was boring. And tiring. And his throat quickly felt raw. Jim felt himself starting to flag, but before he even really noticed the temptation, Blair was gently prodding him to keep his pace.

The room began to spin under him. Jim hoped it wasn't just hyperventilation. He got his answer as his hands stretched painfully into paws. The pain in his jaw and head were worse, and Jim cried out as he sprouted a muzzle. Blair was still close, still murmuring demands that Jim breathe, and so Jim forced himself back to the rhythm. The breaths themselves hurt, now. His throat was raw, the muscles in his gut ached. He couldn't remember why he'd wanted to do this. His tail--

Having a tail was so distracting that he sat up and stared at it. It was only then that he realized that he wasn't lying on towels on his living room floor. He was lying on leaf litter on the floor of a jungle. The pain was gone. So was the pounding breath. And Blair's voice, but that was all right. He had known he'd have to go alone.

He wasn't alone, though. Above him, hanging from the canopy, were five cages. Each of them held an animal. Impossibly, in some cases, because there was no way to fit a full-grown orca in a cage that looked no bigger than a foot locker.

Five, he thought, with some surprise. What were the odds that they'd gotten the numbers right? That he and Jack had hadn't missed one or mistakenly gotten an extra on the list?

And then he saw, crumbled on the ground, an empty cage. Oh. Six, then. And for one of those six, it was already too late. There were also, scattered about heaps of broken wood. Other cages, Jim realized. Other cages for other kinds of sentinels. And empty, now. He counted half a dozen and then stopped counting. Instead, he tipped his head back, looking up at the living prisoners dangling above him.

Only one was looking down, the hound. And she didn't seem too sure of him. Cautious, she watched without moving. "Where are you?" Jim asked.

She didn't answer.

"How do I find you?"

But no, this had been the problem before, hadn't it? He could find the animals, but they wouldn't talk to him.

"Please," he begged.

Floppy hound ears cocked slightly. She might be considering it. Before she decided, though, a hand grabbed Jim by the tail and hauled him bodily backwards through the trees. The bright clarity of the blue dream gave way to grey, candle-lit dimness and pain.

Hands had him pinned, a weight on his shoulders, a horrible claustrophobia--

Jim shoved, squirmed, Blair, God--

"Easy, Jim. Breathe. Come on--"

Blair shoved him back and tried to turn and crawl away. "Why--" he croaked. His throat was dry and raw.

"Are you all right? What happened? Jim--"

"Why did you stop me?" Jim's voice was still breaking, but that might be betrayal as easily as exhaustion.

"Why did I stop you--"

"I almost had them!"

"You stopped breathing!"

"I was there!" Jim crawled the rest of the way to the couch and managed to rise as far as his knees by pulling himself up on the arm. "I was there! I didn't need to keep doing the damn pattern--"

"No! Jim! You weren't breathing at all! And what the fuck, by the way!"

"I was fine!"

"You were supposed to be fine! It was supposed to be safe! You stopped breathing!"

Jim dropped his head and let the couch take his weight. "Damn it. I almost--I'd found them--"

Timidly, Blair touched him on the small of his back. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Did you learn anything?"

Jim shook his head helplessly. "I don't know where they are."

Blair's hands were hot on Jim's shoulders, even through his tee shirt. "We'll try something else," he promised. "I'll try next time. I've done it before." His voice dropped to a whisper, "I found you. We both know I did. I'll give it a try."

Blair got up and went to the kitchen. His sudden absence left Jim feeling cold. He climbed up into the couch and pulled the afghan down around him.

The kitchen light Blair turned on was blinding, even from the living room. Jim pulled his knees up and hid his face.

"Here, drink some water."

Jim took the glass without looking. The cold water was soothing on his raw throat. "How long was I out?" he asked.

"The whole thing didn't even take half an hour. But Jim. Not again tonight. Please."

"No. Not again. I need to try something else."

"Okay. Hypnotism is a possibility. I'm....okay at it. Jack is better, but I really don’t want to explain. Hey--Isobel! I took a class for her for three days when she got sick over the summer. She's a great hypnotist and she owes me a favor. We can tell her...something."

Jim drained the rest of the water. "Call the airport and get us the earliest flight to Los Angeles. And hand me my cell phone, would you. I need to call Simon."

Blair had an easier time booking the flight for 5:30 the next morning than Jim had convincing Simon that he hadn't completely lost his mind. "Look, I'm going as part of an ongoing investigation--"

"There's an investigation now? Jim you have no evidence!"

"Then I'm on vacation. Or sick leave, if you decide I've lost my mind."

"What does Sandburg say about all this?" Jim gritted his teeth and said meekly that Blair was just fine with it and would be going along to make sure Jim didn't do anything irrational or stupid.

Simon sighed extravagantly. "You may not have noticed this, Detective, but I am actually on your side." In the end, Simon promised to get Jim's cases covered for the next day and let him off with a promise to be careful.

It wasn't even nine o'clock yet. Sandburg made tuna sandwiches, and they ate them sitting on the couch. Throwing together a single overnight bag--just in case--took less then ten minutes. It was still early for bed time, and, frankly, Jim wasn't looking forward to going upstairs to stare at the ceiling for hours. Sandburg just settled in on the couch, though, and after a few minutes, Jim set the alarm on his cell phone to go off at three, and sat down beside him. If they fell asleep, well, that would be fine.

~Wednesday

He woke in darkness, covered with a blanket, his cell phone squealing obnoxiously. Breakfast happened at the airport; coffee purchased from a trendy alcove and granola Sandberg had brought.

The plane ride was--best forgotten as quickly as possible. The plane smelled. And shook. Jim gritted his teeth and counted the minutes. Sandburg repeatedly asked if he was all right. Jim just nodded. He did, when they landed, give in and let Sandburg negotiate the rental car counter, and drive the little Toyota they had available.

They caught the tail end of LA morning traffic, and it took almost forty-five minutes to make it to the address Alan Eppes had given them. As they pulled up in front of the aging bungalow, Jim spared a thought to worry about not having called first, but he could hear someone moving around inside.

Jim's knock was met with a short, flustered pause, a flutter at the peephole, and a nervous, "Who is it?"

"My name is Jim Ellison. I'm with the Cascade Police Department."

"The what?"

Jim held up his ID. "It's about the Eppes case. Alan Eppes met with me--"

"That was in Washington."

Jim continued to hold his ID in view. "Yes, it was."

Slowly, the door opened. The man on the other side was short and middle-aged and not Alan Eppes. "Alan's not here," he said. "Don is getting out of the hospital today. I'm here to help get things ready."

"We won't take up much of your time," Jim said. "I just wanted to see the site of the abduction. Mr.--?"

"Fleinhardt. Dr. Larry Fleinhardt. I'm a...friend of Charlie's. And you can see anything you want, but the police were all over it months ago. It's been professionally cleaned. There's nothing left. Even Charlie couldn't find anything in there."

"I'd like to see it anyway," Jim said.

Fleinhardt shrugged and led them to the living room. It was warmly furnished in well-used arts and crafts furniture. It didn't smell of blood or fear. Slowly, Jim stepped into the room. Behind him, he could here Blair making nice with the civilian. He was being friendly and distracting, leaving Jim to look around.

Charles Eppes. What the hell happened to you here? A gifted sentinel, not particularly young, but sheltered, his first guide was his mother, not certified, apparently, but well trained--

Charlie been sleeping, here on the couch, when the blond woman came in. He and Don had been working all night on traffic patterns for the LA city planning office, and when they'd finally finished Charlie had collapsed to sleep on the couch and Don had gone out for breakfast. Charlie was a light sleeper, and careful as she was, he heard her. He'd jumped up, terrified, tried to retreat over the side of the couch.

She was fast. Predator fast. Jaguar fast.

And strong.

They'd struggled. The syringe she'd brought to subdue him went flying, but still, she was strong--

And then a second man had come in. The older brother, Don, obviously. The jaguar pulled a handgun, and, without hesitating, fired.

Donald Eppes had made no sound as he fell, but Charlie had started keening. He'd slid out of the woman's grasp and thrown himself down onto his knees, smearing the blood.

"Stop it!" she snarled.

The desperate, half-formed shrieks continued. She grabbed him by the hair. "He's not dead yet. He might even survive. But if you don't shut up and come with me right now, I'll shoot him in the head."

Charlie hadn't managed to stop the crying, but he came without resistance....

Jim gasped, bracing himself on the fireplace mantle. His hand knocked over a tiny, plastic figurine. Numbly, Jim picked it up. It was an animal, yellowish and slightly goofy. "What's this?" Jim asked.

Fleinhardt frowned in puzzlement. "Oh. That's Charlie's. He got it in a hamburger meal when that movie came out. Hamlet, but with Lions."

"What kind of animal is it?"

"Um, a meerkat, I think?"

Jim put the tiny plastic animal back.

"Listen. About Charlie--"

"Yes?" Jim asked.

"I was talking to Alan before he left this morning. He said all the sentinels who had been taken, they were healthy."

Jim nodded, waiting.

Fleinhardt looked at the floor, the walls, anywhere but at Jim. "The thing was--Charlie was--is--Charlie is healthy. But he's not...he's still not normal. Not the way you think of it. He zoned."

Jim wondered if he should be offended, but even if he should be, the reek of misery and worry wafting off this man would have been enough to soften up a heart of granite. "We all zone," he said gently.

"Not like this. When he's gone, he's really gone. Last year, on campus--he teaches part time--he zoned through the fire alarm. The fire alarm! I'd hate to think what would have happened if the building had actually been on fire. It's just--whoever has got him, what ever they have in mind, he's not going to be easy to, ah, manage." He petered to a stop and sighed.

"We'll do our best to bring him home soon," Jim said. He heard a car pull up into the drive, and followed the sound out onto the small porch.

Mr. Eppes was bent over the passenger side of the car. A face peered over his shoulder. It was a face Jim recognized, although he hadn't seen pictures. "Who's that?"

Mr. Eppes turned. "Detective? What are you doing here?" he asked, surprised.

"I wanted to look at the scene for myself," Jim answered, acutely aware of how lame that sounded.

Fleinhardt said, "I let him in. I hope that's okay."

"It's fine." Eppes turned back to the car and carefully levered Don out and onto his feet. Jim waited, watching, as they made their way up the short steps. Don Eppes was moving very slowly, clinging to a cane and his father's arm. He smelled of hospital disinfectant and pain medication and recent infection.

Jim waited off to the side while Alan Eppes and Fleinhardt had gotten Don settled on a chair in the living room. Don himself was watching Jim. "Have you found anything?" he asked.

Jim shook his head. "We're still collecting information. That's why we're here, actually. I was wondering if any of you noticed anything unusual in the days before Charles was taken?"

"Ah, what do you mean, 'unusual'?" Fleinhardt asked.

"Was there any indication that he was being watched or followed? Was he...nervous? distracted? Anything...unusual?"

Don Eppes closed his eyes. "He was dreaming about mom. For days.... I think he was a little distracted by that. He might not have noticed, if someone had been hanging around."

Fleinhardt's scent spiked of alarm. Jim looked at him. With visible reluctance, Fleinhardt said, "He was...seeing things. That weren't there."

Don sat up. "Now hold it right there, Larry. Of all the crap Charlie has ever had to take, he's never had to hear it from you--"

"No. I mean things that really weren't there! Things he knew weren't there. The Tuesday before...before he was taken, Charles and I were in his office. He was holding office hours, and as usual, everybody was too intimidated to come. So I was hanging out. And he asked me if I could see the leopard sitting in the corner."

"The leopard," Jim whispered.

"You know. A big, spotted cat. He said he'd seen it a couple of times."

"He never mentioned that to me," Don said. His father shook his head.

"He said he was kind of embarrassed," Fleinhardt whispered. "He said...he knew it happened to other sentinels. But he never thought it would be him."

The silence that followed was horrible. Finally, Don asked, "Detective, is my brother still alive?"

Jim thought of the plastic meerkat sitting on the mantle behind him. "He's alive. And I'll find him."

***

After the Eppes house, Jim had Sandburg head out to the building that had housed Psych, the oddball private investigation company run by Shaun Spencer. Jim paced back and forth along the sidewalk in front, looking at angles, wondering about witnesses, thinking like a cop. None of the weird double vision hit here. Guster came out and let them in, but the dusty inside of the small office was equally...normal. Concealing his disappointment, Jim thanked Guster and led Sandburg back to the car.

"So what next, Man?"

"Airport," Jim said, sighing.

"Are we going to head to New Mexico?"

"No, we're going home. I don't know what I was hoping to find. There's nothing useful here. This was a waste of time."

Sandburg called to arrange a flight, but insisted on lunch before heading back to the airport. Jim tried to be casual and confident. It was a case. He was working on it. Sooner or later they would find something.

***

"Have you seen the leopard, too?" Blair asked under the crash safety demo.

"Jaguar," Jim corrected, answering the question. He turned his face to the window, and reluctantly, Blair let him have his retreat. Jim was disappointed and frustrated, Blair didn’t need to coax him into revealing his relevant feelings. He felt responsible for what Brackett was doing now; all those months that Jim had quietly accepted his own abuse, and now Lee Brackett was out there, hurting someone else. Nothing would fix this but finding him and putting an end to it.

More of a mystery was the whole thing with the animals. Blair had come to think of Jim's visions as a private matter of sentinel spirituality. Or, to put a more scientific face on it, a coping mechanism that deflected the physiological affects of stress and anxiety. Certainly, seeing animals hadn't hurt Jim. In the space of only a few months, he'd gone from sick and fragile and malnourished to damn near a poster boy for sentinel health and stability.

But the whole animal thing...might not be completely idiosyncratic and personal after all. If it was a warning of external thereat--

But maybe better not to finish that thought. Maybe. Because Blair could never tell anybody. First off, it would be a waste of time since nobody would believe him. Blair was in police work. He couldn’t go around looking like some kind of hippy flake, at least not in his professional life. Second--well, saying anything at all, even couched in the most neutral terms, would imply all sorts of things about Jim's inner world. Which he would hate even if he weren't in police work.

Blair's mom would find it fascinating. She'd probably arrange a special visit, just to ask questions.

Jack would be disappointed. Not just because it would look like Blair was abandoning science for mysticism, but because he saw the current discourse about guide skill and attachment to be vital to the future of sentinel health, and a glitzy but fuzzy move toward the occult would distract attention from the more boring, concrete issue. Jack would be more than disappointed, he'd be absolutely crushed. He'd also be convinced Blair was too incompetent to allow near a sentinel.

Jim had fallen asleep, his head resting against the window. Poor Jim. He didn't want any of this crap. He just wanted to find Brackett.

God, Jim was going to be in a state if they didn’t get a break soon. Or if bodies of those missing people started turning up. But Jim had said that Charles Eppes wasn't dead. And he had sounded sure. But whatever Jim knew, he wasn’t talking.

Blair stared for a long time at the seat in front of him, his eyes tracing the rough weave of the utilitarian upholstery.

Jim sat up suddenly and glanced around.

"What's wrong?" Blair asked. "Are you okay?"

Jim didn't really answer. "What's in Sierra Verde?"

Blair wondered if it was a trick question. "Um, some nice tourist beaches. Some drug runners. Oh, Dr. Paulson. Some jungle. Accusations of illegal logging and drilling."

"Dr. Paulson?"

"From Rainier. He took a bunch of grad students down to work on restoring some Mayan ruins at Xel Che. For tourists, you know? Why?"

But Jim didn't seem to be answering any questions at all. "Why would you take a sentinel to Sierra Verde?"

"Me? I wouldn't." Jim seemed to want more, so he added. "Look, it's the Third World down there. That means poverty, which means pollution and sanitation problems....Sentinels travel poorly as it is."

Jim thought for a moment. "If you had--if someone had taken sentinels there, what would they be doing?"

Huh. "Well...hiding? the government's pretty chaotic, especially once you get past the tourist areas. Why? Is that where they are, Jim?"

Jim nodded once.

"And the spotted cat?"

"The woman working with Brackett. I...I just dreamed her."

"In Central America."

"Chief--if we go running off there and...it's all some kind of--of hallucination--"

"Right. But we don't have any other clues. So. We should probably pack when we get home. Comfortable shoes. Passports."

Jim looked at Blair, and for a moment the naked gratitude showed on his face. Blair wished he could think of something wise or comforting to say.

***

At home, Jim went right to the phone to make arrangements to fly to Sierra Verde while Blair set about re-packing. Lots of socks and underwear. Jim's own soap. All the granola in the house. Dress pants? A tie? Just in case?

Abruptly, Blair walked away from the shoulder bags and picked up his cell. He had Jack on speed dial.

"Blair. Hi. They're sending Rodney home later today, but they still don't know what caused it, the victim count is past a hundred and fifty, so you still need to keep a close eye on Jim."

"Right. Believe me, I am. Um, I wanted to ask you a question."

There was a short pause, then, "You have my full attention."

Blair hadn't been asking for quite that much. In fact, now that he had Jack on the phone, he felt kind of silly. "Does Sierra Verde mean anything to you?"

To his surprise, Jack laughed. Sounding much more relaxed, he asked, "Is Jim still on that? I thought he was past that stage."

"Uh, what stage?"

"Researching obscure sentinel references in the popular culture." Another chuckle. "Where in the world did he find out about Henry Jones?"

"Henry Jones," Blair repeated, mystified. He’d been half-afraid that Jack would tell him Sierra Verde was known as the hub for an international sex trade in sentinels, or something. But Henry Jones? He knew the name--the gonzo archeologist who was the real-life "Indiana" Jones. The original hadn't been as violent in real life as his movie counterpart, but he'd been every bit as careless and erratic.

"All right, if he really wants to know the whole story of Henry Jones and the lost temple of the sentinels, a book came out about five years ago...by the same guy who wrote the big biography of the Kellogg brothers. I hear it's actually very funny."

"Oh. Thanks, Jack. Great."

Lost temple of the sentinels. That was Sierra Verde? Slowly, Blair came out of his bedroom. "Jim?" he asked. "Are we going into the jungle?"

Jim was staring at the house phone in bemusement. "What? Oh. I don’t know. I saw them offloading a private plane on the beach somewhere. Maybe."

Blair went back to collect their hiking boots and more socks.

"Simon's coming," Jim called after him. "Can you believe that? He says...He says Brackett is as much his problem as is ours."

***

~Detour--what happened Tuesday night

It was Shawn Spencer who managed to escape. Katie followed the rustle of the brief struggle, the crunch of feet on the hard path, the chang of weight against the fence....Of course it was Shawn, she thought, Shawn who never shut up, who never showed fear, who laughed his way through his sessions in the tank. Their captors were sharp and they hadn't relaxed their guard, ever. But Shawn had been relentless, too. His feet hit the ground on the other side of the fence, and he was running--

He'd never make it. Of course. She was a tracker. He wouldn't get away. If they were lucky, he would be dragged back alive. Katie found herself gasping. She had never seen a body, but she could imagine Shawn dead.

Benson used to say that fear wasn't something that was caused by the world. Fear was the brain's response to the world. Fear wasn't inevitable. Not even particularly useful. And fear was something Katie could control.

She could still hear Shawn's feet. She could also hear a crowd of pursuers, not very far behind.

In the bed to the left of hers, Charlie was curled loosely into a ball, staring at his picture. He was hopeless and apathetic, but it was working for him, and as much as Katie would have liked a kind--or even sane--word from him, she couldn't begrudge him his little victory. Across the way Dr. Stewart was asleep. How a sentinel could sleep through Shawn's escape, Katie had no idea, but in Stewart's case she really didn't think it was any kind of victory. His moods were volatile and his senses were more out of control every day.

Dr. Brennan, for her part, was folded inward. Again. Still and silent, eyes unfocused, she showed no response to the hunt outside. Katie was starting to think that she might be paying attention, though. As the days went by, Temperance Brennan spoke less and less, but she paid attention to every detail, every moment.

"Hey! All right! You win! Hey- no hitting! I'm valuable--"

Shawn had been caught. Whatever the guards who caught up to him said in response wasn't shouted, and Katie couldn't make it out. Katie bit her lip and waited. The trip back took longer than the trip out.

They brought him back in leg irons. Actual leg irons. The crummy cement-block buildings and the bars on the windows and the tall fence were all just shabby enough and damp enough to be real. Leg irons, though, that was...impossible, somehow. Over the top. Mythical maybe.

Charlie looked up long enough to say, "You had to know it wouldn't work."

Shawn shrugged. As far as Katie could see or smell, he hadn't been badly hurt. He said, "It was fun, though." He didn't bother to grin, not when it was only them to see it.

Charlie sighed and turned over. Ever since the woman had produced a grainy picture of his brother on the grounds of some rehab hospital, he'd stopped crying, but he still spent most of the time wrapped up in his own misery and hopelessness. It covered him like a thick cocoon, and in its way, was very good at keeping other people out. Not that Katie thought he was faking it. He reeked of heartbreak. But neither the harsh reality of their captivity nor the disconcerting sessions--at least, they were disconcerting for everyone else--seemed to be able to reach him through the pain and grief he clung to. Katie sort of envied him.

Benson would have been disappointed at that, after all those years teaching her to master herself. At eight, she had learned to control her breathing. At nine, her heart rate. By ten she'd stopped zoning by accident and by twelve she hadn't needed to do it on purpose. Patience. Endurance. Control. Focus. He had devoted ten years to teaching her to be healthy and free. The day she'd left for college, Daddy had broken down and cried, but Benson had just smiled and kissed the top of her head, satisfied that she was ready for the world.

Benson would have thought of a way out of this by now.

The door, heavy but badly fitting, clattered open. Everyone flinched but Dr. Stewart. He came in, the nasty guide. He pointed immediately at Katie. "We're really tired of pussy-footing around. Let's have some results this time, hmm?" And for some reason that just really pissed Katie off, because it wasn't like they were told what 'results' they were supposed to be producing. She wasn't even sure the captors knew. Both of the scientists smelled like confusion and frustration most of the time. If the damn tanks weren't working, it wasn't Katie's fault.

He looked around for someone else to take; there were two tanks inside the temple; last week someone had decided that was significant and started testing them in pairs. It was less scary that way, but didn't seem to make much difference otherwise. It was wet. It was ominous. Sometimes...it was weird.

He opened Katie's transparent door and then started for Charlie's. On the other side, though, Dr. Brennan stood up. "Brackett," she said. "I'll go."

He shrugged and unlocked her door.

Katie stripped off her sweats and stepped into the tank without being told. The water was warm. She paused before lying down, though. Brennan was still dressed, crouching beside the low wall of her own stone tank. There were shallow shelves set into the thick sides, and each of these was filled with plain stone blocks. Brennan was running her hands over these rocks, wiggling them gently in their niches.

"Move it, toots," He said, just to be irritating. Dr. Brennan shrugged and stood up, but Alex, the sentinel working for them suddenly came over. Her. Katie squeezed her eyes shut. She wouldn’t go out of her way to be nasty, but she was cold and dangerously alert. If Dr. Brennan was up to something, Alex would spot it immediately, and not be particularly gentle about putting an end to any games--

But she only squatted beside the wall, looking where Dr. Brennan had looked.

"They're not worth anything," Brackett said. "They're not even decorated."

Alex watched while Dr. Brennan gently coaxed one of the heavy blocks out of its niche. "It's magnetic," Alex said.

Dr. Brennan bent the rest of the way down and set the block on the floor. "You people have no idea what you're doing at all, do you." She turned away and stripped to her underwear.

Alex swapped out two more of the heavy stones, apparently randomly. Katie wondered if Dr. Brennan had any idea what she was up to.

One of the weaselly little scientists produced the usual cup of bitter tea. Katie grimaced and drank and leaned back into the water.

It hit her fast, this time. And it was going to be one of the weird ones.

A red dream, for a start. She hadn't had those before coming here, and they were never good. In the red world she was Shawn, escaping, running, away, away. Over the fence and out into the trees. And how stupid had that been anyway? There was no place to go, no road to follow even. Never mind that you'd never find a town, the water had parasites in it and there were animals in the rainforest that would happily eat a person. And--rainforest? That was a pretty euphemism. It was a jungle out there. Literally. Katie was a grad student. She didn't know shit about survival, and she bet Shawn hadn't either, but he'd put this idea into her head and she was running over rough, mushy ground, her face slapped by trees--

Swimming, under water, fast. And deep. More like piloting a Bathyscaph than swimming, except she wasn't very good at that.

Different venue, same action. Katie was still fleeing. Kelp, now, not trees, but the dream was still red, still nearly on fire and Katie was still trying to escape.

She heard a voice behind her, maybe Temperance Brennan's voice, except she didn't talk much. She was shouting for Katie to stop, to get a hold of her self. Her instructions were only a pale idea beside the burning need to get away.

"Calm down!"

If Katie could have paused in her rush, she would have turned back and screamed her own warning: No. Run. Hurry. Even though in reality their captivity wasn't so awful that it made dying in the jungle seem like a good idea. Sometimes, in the tank, Katie dreamed of great cats, lions and leopards. She was in the tank now, wasn't she? All the more reason to get away.

It took her long seconds after running around to realize what had happened. She hurt. She couldn't move. She felt crushed, pressed by a weight so heavy she could barely breathe. She'd run out of ocean to flee through and washed up on red sand. She ought to be able to just get up and keep running, but she couldn't lift herself even a little with her arms. Too heavy. Too stiff.

Hot and bright, the air seemed to burn her skin. Going to red places--Katie should have found a way not to do this, not to come here. The red dreams were always worse than weird. She tried to remember what Benson had taught her about lucid dreaming, but she'd never had a problem with dreams before being brought to this temple in the jungle. She hadn't paid much attention.

There was a panther on the beach. Katie wondered if the red dreams could get as bad as being eaten alive. Then Dr. Brennan's voice came from the other side. "Catherine. Forget him. Turn toward me and get up."

"I can't move."

"Yes, you can. Turn toward me and get up."

"I can't!"

Dr. Brennan seized Katie almost roughly and hauled her to her feet. For a moment, Katie balanced against her awkwardly and then pitched sideways. She landed not on the beach but in the tank, he ears muffled by warmish water, the smell of mineral salts heavy in the air, and her body tingling with the after-image of the red dream's burn.

Alex and the nasty guide and one of the scientists were arguing. Their voices echoed off the walls horribly, and Katie pressed her hands over her ears as she struggled to her knees.

***

"Mum! Mummy!" The shriek was at a volume and pitch that Duncan had never heard, not even at work. Even if it hadn't been his own Mary's voice, the sound would have struck him to the bone. He shot out of bed, legs tangled in the sheets, and slammed face-first into the carpet. He was on his feet again in a moment, but the delay put him behind enough that Tessa made it to Mary's room first.

There was no scent of an intruder, no scent of blood, no scent of sickness. Before his hands touched her, Duncan knew there was no fever. She was hunched against the headboard, pale with terror, still shrieking. "Lions! And rats! And sharks! Mum!"

"Sweetheart, what's wrong? You've had a bad dream--"

"Lions! And wolves! They were going to eat me!"

Duncan's blood ran cold. "Tessa, go get Joe."

"Mac, what--?"

"This is a...sentinel thing. Go get Joe."

Tessa went, more worried than she'd been a moment ago. Duncan couldn't deal with that right now. He sat on the edge of the bed, running his hands over Mary's skin, reassuring himself that physically at least, she was fine....

He wondered if he ought to call Conner. But he was hours away. And Joe might know what to do. If, indeed, anything needed to be done.

It occurred to Duncan belatedly to scoop Mary up and carry her down stairs. They met Joe, half-dressed and rushing anxiously, in the front hall. "She's seeing animals," Duncan announced, holding his daughter out where Joe could see.

Joe stumbled a little and gaped in confusion. He leaned around to look at Tessa, who was just behind him, closing the front door. "Is that what this is about?"

"I don't know. I think she had a nightmare, but Mac is frantic."

"It wasn't a nightmare!" Mary gasped. "They were there. They were real. Lions and rats and snakes and--and a big black and white shark, and they were going to eat me."

Joe sighed and scrubbed at his eyes with his free hand. "All right. Let's sit down and figure this out." He took the wingback chair and patted his lap. At once, Mary slipped free of Duncan's grasp and darted over to take cover in Joe's arms. "Now tell me about these animals. Why do you think they were going to eat you?"

Mary stilled, thinking. "They were making a lot of noise...."

"Did they hurt you? Snap at you?"

"N-No."

"Did they talk to you?"

"No."

Joe sighed. "Angel, sometimes...people like you just see animals. They're not real. They can't hurt you. It doesn't mean anything. It just....happens."

"It's never happened before." That wasn't quite a challenge, but she was watching him shrewdly.

"No, and I can see that it would be scary, waking up with a room full of animals--"

"They weren't in my room. I was on the moors."

Joe nodded. "Very scary, for your first time. But it's normal. Possibly even healthy. And it doesn't mean anything." He sang "Teddy Bear's Picnic" to her, and then "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." When Mary was rosy and mellow, he sent her off with Tessa, back to bed.

When they were gone, Duncan leaned across and said very softly, "How sure are you that it doesn't mean anything? Connor sees animals. And that detective in America talked about them."

"Oh, I'm sure it means something. Sentinels who paint, almost always paint animals. Sentinels who write always have poetry about animals. She may spend her whole life questing after what they mean. An artistic outlet would be good for her. But she doesn't need to get into all that right now. All that matters right now is that they can't hurt her."

"But--Joe. You know what I'm asking. You should have heard her screaming. I've never--" Duncan swallowed. "And I have to wonder...if so many of us see them...I have to wonder why."

"The latest theory is that sentinels use more of their brains than other people. And part of what they evolved using their brains for was looking out for large things that move. So...a little random misfiring? Some stray neurons setting up a short cut? Who knows. Case studies go back to the 1890s. Until the thirties, it was taken as evidence that sentinels had a tendency to be mentally unstable. But they did a study that showed that sentinels who saw animals were--statistically--slightly healthier and more emotionally durable than those who didn't. So we stopped worrying about it. And so should you." He lifted himself out of the chair and onto his legs. "I'm going to bed. I'm so glad we moved to a semi. Makes things much more convenient. Feel free to wake me up with pounding and yelling any time you need to give me good news about the kid being healthy and normal." He shook his head, smiling a little. "Really, Mac. She's fine."

***

"I don't understand. He can't see much of anything either, right?" Ray's voice was tight and a little nervous, and, as usual, not nearly quiet enough to keep Fraser from hearing him.

Ray's answer didn't bother to be quiet. It was also interspersed with gasping and cursing. He'd been fine on the flat land of the valley, but now that they were headed up toward the pass, he couldn't seem to put his feet right two steps in a row. "Don't worry about it. He knows what--shit--direction to go in, he's going in it, we'll get there--crap! When we get there."

"But how good is he? At this flying on instruments thing? Because--"

"He's only messed it up once. Damn."

Fraser glanced back. Ray was scraping animal scat off his boot with a stick. "These are brand new," he complained sourly. "And this is the second time I've stepped in dog doo."

"Deer," Fraser corrected, continuing forward.

"Huh, what?" Ray asked.

"Deer doo, not dog doo. Both times."

"Oh. Well. Okay, then." He tossed the stick away and scrambled to catch up.

"But what about the time?" Ray asked.

"What time?"

"The time he messed it up and got lost. Geez, Vecchio, you could pay attention."

Ray sighed theatrically. "Hey, Benny. You got a head injury?"

"Not that I'm aware of, Ray."

"Are you blind?"

"Well, with the fog and all, my vision isn't--"

"There, see? No problem. Hey--don't step in that."

"It's just mud, Ray," Fraser said patiently, but he walked around. Around him the Forrest was a flat grey, only the nearest trees rising out of the fog like topless columns.

"It's 'just mud' until you track it back to my car."

"I never track mud anywhere, Ray," Fraser chided gently. Ray's endless and pointless complaints were a good sign. Finding fault with the wilderness was his way of coping with how nervous it made him. Ray--unlike Ray, who was comfortable with admitting that he felt a little out of his depth this far from 'civilization'--managed best when he could pretend that he was in control of the situation.

Fraser paused, resting one hand against a tree, closing his eyes. He didn't know for sure where the American scout troop was, he just had a very good guess. That he was heading toward where he thought they were, he could be sure of that. That they would be there when he and his partners arrived, no guarantees. Ray stepped up behind him, laid a hand on his bicep. "You okay there, Benny?"

"Yes, Ray."

"You need a break? The fog getting to you?"

"I'm good."

Behind them, the radio squawked. "Base Camp to Team Three, over."

"This is Team Three, over," Ray answered.

"It's getting dark. You all ready to head in for the night?"

Ray held a silent conversation with Ray before answering, "Um, negative, base camp. Fraser thinks it's going to get cold tomorrow. We're just going to push on through. Um, over."

"Your call, Team Three. You know the Mountie's crazy, right? Over."

"Say that again when we bring you the kids. Over." As he secured the radio to his backpack, he added, "You're not crazy, Frase. You know that right?"

"Thank you, Ray. I believe you may not be an unbiased--" Somewhere beyond the grey wall of mist, Diefenbaker yelped. His feet made a muffled gallop against the soft ground as he appeared, running full tilt, and dove into the center of their little group.

Fraser looked from him to the fog-shrouded trees, wondering what could have scared him so badly--and what kind of threat would make and arctic wolf run instead of fight.

Dozens of faces stared back at him. Fraser gasped, his first thought that they were too late, the scout troop had died, and these were their ghosts. He blinked and they were gone.

"What's the matter with him?" Ray asked.

A young woman, screaming, ran out of the trees. She was running straight at them, and for a moment, Fraser thought she was real, until she ran straight though him and was gone. Chilled to the bone and unable to focus, Fraser swayed. On each side a Ray caught him and Dief braced himself against his legs. Dear Lord. Fraser forced himself to look up. They were surrounded. From the same direction the woman had come, the forest was alive with animals. They were moving silently, streaming past on all sides, numbering in the hundreds or thousands, going--Fraser had no idea where they were going. He knotted his hands around Ray and Ray's jackets and held on tight as the animals migrated past. Timberwolves and buffalo and wolverines...an eagle flying impossibly slowly. A lot of animals that had never been native to this environment; a cobra, three parrots, an emu.

On his left, Ray cursed softly in Italian. "Is that real?"

Fraser wondered what he was seeing. Ray asked, "Is what real? Frase, what's wrong?"

He didn’t answer, just held them still until the last of the animals had gone past and vanished from sight into the fog behind them. When he finally spoke, he said, "We should get a move on. It'll snow tomorrow before two. We might make it, if that scout troop will stay put."

"Right," Ray said. "Okay. Let's go."

***

Robert sipped the excellent espresso and leaned back in his chair. "So. Mickey," he said.

Mickey smiled pleasantly. "So?"

"So...why are we here?"

"I thought it was your favorite restaurant," he said innocently. The innocent look had been more affective when Mickey had been thirty and charming. Now it just made him look like he was up to something.

"So, you just felt like inviting me out to dinner? Have a little chat? Old times' sake sort of thing? That would be more convincing if it happened more often."

To Robert's astonishment, Mickey looked stricken. "McCall--"

"I'm teasing you, Mickey. If you've lost your sense of humor it's time to retire, because you're getting old."

Mickey managed a thin smile and passed him a photograph. Robert fished out his reading glasses. "Oh. My," he said. The picture was of three people in an airport--LAX, possibly, but he couldn't be sure--and one of them was Lee Brackett.

"That your man?" Mickey asked.

"Oh, yes. This is he. When was this taken?"

"A couple of months ago. Don't start. I don't have the manpower to put your cases on the front burner."

"I don't have cases anymore," Robert said absently. "Who is the woman? Do you know?"

Mickey produced a file. "Alicia Bannister. Ex-army, dishonorable discharge. For most of the last decade, she's been a very successful criminal."

There were pictures. Blond hair. Red hair. Raven hair. Curly hair. Age. Pseudonyms. She was a sentinel--interesting. "Sniper?" Robert asked.

"Art forgery. Go figure. The man with them is Bud Torin, a vice president at Cyclopes Oil."

Robert flipped through the woman's file. There were pictures of some of her forgeries. "Which of them were you following?"

Mickey hesitated. "Torin. He's suspected in making some...questionable investments."

"Mickey. Don’t tell me The Company is investigating insider trading, now," McCall chided.

"Not stocks. Classified documents."

"Ah." Robert said. "What is he doing with Brackett and Banister?"

Mickey winced. "I hoped you might have an idea."

Robert snorted. "Oh, yes. Because I have a habit of holding out on you. No, Mickey, I don't have any idea--"

There was a spotted jaguar crouching in the corner. Its tail was whipping back and forth and its mouth was open, muzzle wrinkled to reveal, long, glistening teeth.

"McCall?" Mickey muttered out of the side of his mouth. He was subtly scooting back his chair, one hand hovering over his gun. "Where?"

Robert glared at the corner until the phantom disappeared. "Sorry, Mickey. Nothing. My mind wandered...."

Mickey sighed and leaned back. To McCall's trained eyes, though, he still looked worried. "You all right?"

"I'm fine." Not very convincing. "Mickey. The senses throw up a glitch now and then. I can always tell the difference. And I promise you, when I'm not fine, it will be you that I call."

Mickey leaned across the table. "If you need me, and you don't call me, I will never forgive you."

Robert smiled at that, and Mickey sighed and shook his head.

"Well, come on, then," Robert said. "I need the rest of it."

"The rest of--come on, McCall. I can't give you the file on Torin."

"You know, whatever I find out, I'll share."

"You aren't going to pursue this yourself. No. No, I mean it. I'll try to find the woman. I'll put some people on it. All right? Banister. But that's the best I can do. All right?"

Robert tapped the picture. "You know how dangerous Brackett is. And the bottom line is, whatever he is doing, he is our responsibility."

"I'm not arguing with you. Am I?"

McCall shrugged apologetically. "No."

"But you're worried."

Robert glanced back at the empty corner. "I'm very worried," he said.

***  
"Sam? You all right?"

"Fine," Sam said, breathing shallowly.

"You look like you're going to puke. It wasn't a bad flight...do you need to sit here a minute?" Because Donna and Sammy Jo couldn't hear them here on the plane, but the moment they stepped into the causeway, they wouldn't be concealed anymore.

Sam shook his head. "Not the vibration. The smell." Thinking about it made his stomach tighten.

"Okay, right. Hurrying, then." He shoved his way into the packed crowd retrieving their carry-ons and scooted back enough for Sam to fit into the aisle in front of him. It was borderline rude, but there wasn't any reasoning with Al when he was thinking like a protective guide.

The only carry-on they had was Al's backpack stuffed under the seat. Although Sam usually flew pretty well, Al didn't complicate life with luggage. Just in case.

As they got closer to the front of the plane, Sam could smell more and more of the cool New Mexico evening and less and less of the gagging combination of old sweat, airline chicken, and baby vomit.

In the causeway the air was cool and sweet and there was enough room for Al to step up beside him and put an arm around Sam's waist. Sam sighed. "Almost there."

"Look happy."

He didn't smell them until they turned the last corner and they were in sight. When he did smell them, he didn't have to force a smile. Sammy Jo was standing on a chair, waving and laughing. The scent of her was dizzying. Sam nearly tripped over his own feet. My little girl, he thought.

Abigail Fuller, Sammy Jo's mother, leaned over to her partner and whispered, "How's he doing?"

"I'm fine," Sam said firmly, but Donna--Oh, she was beautiful. Seeing her, smelling her, it turned his brains to mush. Apart for a couple of months, it was easy to forget, or to think, maybe, that he'd made it all up. The incomparable Donna Elesee. He pinned her with his eyes. "I'm fine. Really."

Donna clearly heard him, but shook her head anyway and said sadly, "He smells like it was a hellish flight."

And it had been, but already it was fading. Sammy Jo launched herself off the chair and dove through the crowd. Sam let go of Al so she could catch her. She was an arm-full at nine. And not nearly done growing yet; she'd be taller than Abigail. "Guess what, Dad, I made dinner, guess what we're having?"

She smelled like tomato sauce and basil and ricotta cheese. "Hamburgers and French fries," he said.

She laughed. "No."

"Tamales."

"I don't know how to make tamales! Da-ad. Lasagna. Hi, Uncle Al. Did you bring me anything?"

Grinning, Al patted her head. "I dunno, Sam. She seems kind of listless to me. You think maybe she's sick?"

Sam laughed.

They'd reached Donna and Abigail. They hugged Al, but didn't try to hug sam, not when he was still overstretched from the flight. Their eyes said enough. Abigail had a bottle of water in her bag, and Sam accepted it gratefully. "So? Ladies? How is the world of high energy physics?"

Donna laughed. "It looks more like magic every day."

"It's not magic," Abigail said irritably. "We'll figure it all out. And by 'we' I mean 'you,' of course."

Donna poked her. "Not this fiscal year. And not with this supercollider."

"Nag, nag, nag," Donna was low-maintenance enough a sentinel that Abigail also worked on the project, keeping track of their budget. It was a good life they had here. They were happy with the work--happier than they'd been at MIT. Though that had been a much shorter commute for visits.

But it was hard with them being so far away. It was hard, when people asked about Abigail's picture on his desk, and Sam had to say, "She lives with my ex and her sentinel out west."

He hadn't meant to think those things. Donna could always smell when he was unhappy about something. She moved in close on the other side from Al and slowly slid her arm through his. Sam thought, fleetingly, of just moving his clinic. The hospital in St. Johnsbury --The hospital had other competent doctors. For that matter, there were other hospitals. Or he could take a couple of years off--now, while Sammy Jo was still a kid--and be a stay at home dad. He could afford it.

Sammy Jo was going first, walking backwards, showing off. She never bumped into anyone. "Amy Gardner got sick," she said grinning. "So now I have her solo in addition to mine."

Sam tried to look stern, but was saved from having to be the heavy by Abigail, who was always quick. "You don't need someone else's misfortune for you to excel. Amy must be crushed. And also pretty embarrassed, considering--"

Donna screamed. Shrieked. It was a sound Sam heard from time to time in the Quiet Ward or the Emergency Room, and--once--in the operating room, when the patient had metabolized the anesthetic and woken up on the table with his appendix half-out. So close to Sam's ear, it wasn’t a sound so much as a pain. He nearly fell trying to untangle from Al and reach for her, and she was already right there--

Al and Abigail were fast. They caught Donna before she hit the floor. Al lowered her from above while Abigail slipped in under and braced Donna's head in her lap. Sam, far to slow on the uptake, followed them down. "Al, take Sammy Jo." He didn't smell pain, he smelled fear. "Donna? Can you hear me?"

She was silent now, staring with wide eyes.

"Donna, honey, you need to tell us what's wrong." Sam brushed his hands over her, searching for rash or heat. He could only smell fear, not sickness, not poison. "Any ideas?"

Abigail shook her head.

Donna reached up, dug her fingers into Sam's shoulders.

"What is it?"

Her eyes filled and ran over. "Sam, can you see it?"

"See what? Donna, talk to me."

She gasped, then, and sagged back into Abigail's arms.

"Donna?"

"Nothing," she whispered. "I saw the space between. The nothing." Shuddering, she sat up and buried her face in her arms. "It was awful. So empty."

"You can't see the space between particles--" Abigail protested.

"What is she talking about?"

"Physics," Abigail said helplessly. "Atoms are mostly empty space. Particles in a huge field of probability. But we can't see that. She's hallucinating--"

Sam turned around to where Al was talking to airport security, explaining that he was going to need an ambulance for a sentinel. "Hold it a minute." He gathered Donna in his arms, pressed his nose to the soft skin under her ear. No bitterness; no waste products from bacteria. No raw, sour sweat; no immune response. No suspicious, unfamiliar smell; she hadn't picked up a pesticide or petroleum distillate. "No hospital. Let's just get her out of here. It's...it's probably just the crowd...." He had no idea, of course. Idiopathic hallucinations? She didn't have a history of anything that looked like this.

They accepted the little golf cart airport security offered. And the help with their baggage. Donna was conscious and tracking--subdued, but not impaired. Sam had a hand locked around her wrist, the thunder of her pulse pounding reassuringly against his palm. It had been a zone, he told himself. Atypical, but not unheard of. She focused her attention internally quite a bit in her work. Her mental band-width was full of sub-atomic particles and theoretical mathematics. Intuitively constructing such a vivid image of something completely beyond sensory experience--it would be alarming to encounter that. Especially when what you were encountering was a reminder that most of existence was an illusion. That would scare anyone.

Right.

He and Al and Sammy Jo waited with her in the cooling New Mexico night while Abigail went for the car. Sam angled Donna and Sammy Jo away from the lights and chaos of the street. He couldn’t conceal his worry from either of them. They couldn't conceal theirs--although Donna seemed more afraid of the universe falling apart than getting sick.

Al was standing several feet away, checking his voicemail while watching for Abigail. "Uh, Sam," he said. "You should hear this. We've got a problem."

****

This time, Grissom felt the 'tick' through the floor a half-second before the air conditioner cycled on. The burst of air still felt like being slapped across the back, but at least this time it didn't make him jump.

He might have given some sign, though, because Sara gently pressed his arm and rapped on the table with her free hand. "Greg. Slow down, start over."

Greg made a show of reining in his excitement. From the smell of things, Grissom was willing to bet that his energy was coming as much from caffeine as from the case. "As usual, it has all come down to me." He grinned smugly through an artistic pause. Grissom would have loved to smack him, but Sara had just told him to slow down, and they couldn't have it both ways. "If you what my personal opinion--no, wait, my professional opinion as a chemist and a trained sentinel--Warrick has it."

Grissom felt a slight unexpected warmth at that. Since he'd gotten back last week, everyone had been tiptoeing around him and giving him sad looks. This was the first time Greg had yanked Grissom's chain over anything, and it felt reassuringly normal. "Warrick's sample from the suspect's--yuck--garbage is going to be an exact match for the explosive we're looking for, case closed. Since we're waiting for the test, though, I can't give you the final verdict for another two hours. The test takes two hours, I just put it in...how about we all go have some lunch? Or dinner. Or whatever people eat whenever now is?"

Slowly, Grissom looked from face to face. "Nobody else?" he asked. "No other ideas?" They shook their heads. "All right, take a break," he said. "But don't call it a day until Greg's results come back."

Greg muttered something at that, but his head was tilted down enough that Grissom couldn't tell what it was. He sat back in the chair while everyone else got up and filed out. Their feet set up a wave pattern of vibration on the floor that quickly dissolved to chaos as multiple interference patterns interacted. The movement of their bodies in the confined space set off a small wind storm. Grissom lifted his feet from the floor.

When they were gone, Sara slid his chair back and hopped onto the table in front of him. "Concentration. Problems. Questionmark?" she asked in her slow, precise AMSLAN.

"Tired," he signed, evasively. "Everyone is." Down the hall, a door slammed, making the air shake. Needles on his skin. Again.

When sound had been taking up so much of his attention, Grissom had never noticed the much fainter impressions vibrations made against his body. Now that sound was gone, all the bandwidth his brain had devoted to processing noises had shifted to other stimulations. "I keep thinking about Ellison," he said aloud. He hadn't meant to say it at all.

"Who?"

"That detective in Washington. The late bloomer. It's been almost a month, and I can't handle a major change in even one of my senses. How could someone adjust to all of them...?"

She answered that, but Grissom didn't see what she said. He briefly considered just letting it go, but no. That was no habit to get into. "Again," he prompted.

"It takes time." She fingerspelled out 'time' helpfully.

How very deep, he thought bitterly. But he didn't vent his frustrations on his guide. Instead he showed her the completely intuitive sign for 'time' and, for good measure, added 'patience.' He was reasonably sure she wouldn't have to be shown these again. Sara's vocabulary was coming along very quickly; her memory was excellent. Her deficiencies were in the subtleties of syntax and nuance. Most of her statements were word-for-word transpositions of spoken English. It would be embarrassing--except, of course, for the fact that he was the only one she was talking to. Grissom was getting very good at understanding her, crude sentence construction notwithstanding.

"Are you hungry?" she asked. "I’m starving."

Right, yes. He hadn't eaten since about four this morning, more than twelve hours go. Much more, actually. "Sandwiches?" he asked. "Or they say the veg tamales at Tia Rosa are fantas--"

Sara's head snapped around. She leaped off the table, one hand snatching at his shoulder. Grissom barely managed to avoid tripping over her heels as he followed her out the door.

Their destination was the locker room. Most of the rest of the night shift had been preparing to go on break, but instead of people changing into spare clothes or digging out their cash for dinner, it was chaos. Catherine was pinned in the corner, struggling with her guide, Holly. Greg was standing in the middle of the room, apparently having some kind of panic attack. One of the guide interns was trying to haul him out of the way of--

Nick and Warrick, who were both on the floor. Without stopping to think, Grissom shoved Sara toward Warrick. "Fix him," he ordered, and fell to his knees beside Nick.

At the first touch, Nick's eyes flew open and he squirmed backwards until he fetched up against the leg of a bench. The locker room was a terrible place to try to make sense of smells, but this close, Grissom could tell he reeked of terror. "Nick. It's me. I'm not going to hurt you."

He reached out again. Nick flinched and tried to retreat again, but he'd already gone as far as he could go. He began to babble far too fast for Grissom to follow. "Nicky, stop it." Probably, he was shouting. Nick stilled, though. Grissom laid hand on his stomach.

Pulse and blood pressure were both high, consistent with panic. He didn't feel the vibration that marked a large hemorrhage, not that there was any reason to expect one. No scent of sickness, no scent of toxics. Not that any of the current cases had indications that extremely toxic chemicals would be involved. And besides, Nick had spent the last eight hours in an office with a junior detective, reading thousands of emails in search of something incriminating.

Nick grabbed his arm, shouted slowly: "There's girl. She's scared. In trouble. She can't get away."

Grissom could not have read that right. "A girl?" Nick nodded. "Where? Here?" In the chaos of even a good day, it would be possible for someone to hide here without scent giving her away.

"No, not here." Nick looked suddenly confused. "I don't know. Gris. We have to help her. She was trying to get away, and she--"

A hand on his shoulder. Grissom looked up. Catherine, damp-eyed but calm, now. She said, "I saw her, too. A young woman. She was...scared."

Grissom looked at them. "You both saw a young woman, just now, who's not here." He pressed his lips together. "Holly. Get over here and tell me what the hell happened."

Holly, at this point looking more freaked out than Catherine, squatted on Grissom's other side. "I was on my cell phone. And Cath started yelling. And I turned around and she was crying. And Nicky tripped over--something and fell down. And then I heard something else fall behind me, and when I turned, Warrick was on the floor...."

Grissom looked at the disaster area the locker room had become. "What about Greg?"

"He came out of the men's toilet and saw everyone and...freaked out. I was thinking...I dunno, airborne toxin, I guess. I was trying to get Cath out, but she wouldn't listen."

"Right. Okay. Do that. Take both of them out of here, just in case." He gestured both Nick and Catherine into Holly's care. "No further than the parking lot, if you need to go outside. We're all getting checked out."

Catherine tried to protest that, but Grissom cut her off by the simple expedient of turning his back on her. Greg was still hysterical, and now so was the intern. Grissom yelled at them both and ordered them out into the fresh air. He ignored Ecklie and the crowd that had gathered and dropped to his knees beside Warrick. Sara had moved him into the recovery position. His skin was hot and coming out in welts.

Grissom ran his hands over Warrick's skin and clothing, leaned down and sniffed. Sweat. Coffee. Motor oil? Vinyl. Something distantly related to chlorine. If this was a reaction to some contaminant Grissom couldn't place which one. He breathed more deeply, risking secondary contamination. Grissom was more durable than Warrick, and if he could identify an antagonist before succumbing to exposure from transfer, there would be a treatment.

Warrick's heartbeat was irregular. "Tell me you called an ambulance, Sara."

"About two minutes out."

"Did you notice anything? In the meeting earlier?"

She shook her head helplessly. She hadn't seen any sign of problems. But she didn't watch Warrick and Nick very much now. She was too busy watching Grissom.

Two ambulances arrived. Grissom dispatched Warrick and Sara to the hospital right away. He had Greg and Nick both evaluated at the scene--they'd didn't appear to be in distress, but he wanted a record of their vitals. That also gave Grissom enough time to pin down a lab tech and give her enough instructions to keep the current case from completely getting away from them. Then he corralled every sentinel currently on duty at the department--himself included--and packed them into the second ambulance.

Katherine spent the entire trip protesting that nothing was wrong with her, and this was a waste of time. Grissom pretended to pay attention, since it was easier than arguing, but he had no intention of backing down. Something had happened to Warrick. And yes, all right, he had a history of dangerous idiosyncratic reactions. But something had radically affected Katherine's and Nick's behavior, too, and for several minutes. Grissom was supervising the forensic sentinels, he wasn't going to take stupid chances.

Desert Palms was waiting for them. Within three minutes of arrival, Grissom was sitting in a small, high-walled cubical holding a clipboard with his paperwork on it. Presumably, his people were all neatly ensconced in similar rooms, and with luck, Katherine and Nick were already being examined.

Grissom felt fine. If it weren't for the others, he wouldn't stay. He needed to set an example, though, and the doctors would probably want samples for comparison....

He hadn't thought out how miserable the emergency room would be. The noise he couldn't hear was a trembling chaos of vibration slapping against his skin. Even worse, the smell of disinfectant and vinyl and sterile packaging was making him a little nauseas. That wasn't a symptom of a current problem, of course. It was a conditioned response to this particular environment. The last time he'd been here was a month ago, right after the surgery. He'd spent three days vomiting from the anesthesia.

The operation had been such a spectacular failure....

A familiar, three-part step rattled against the floor, and Grissom looked up. He wondered--for only a moment--if he was hallucinating the coroner in the emergency room. "Al. What--you, too?"

Al frowned. "Me, too, what? Oh. I'm not here for me. I'm here for you."

Well, that was nonsense. "Would you repeat that?"

"Your guide is looking after Warrick."

"I don't understand."

Al spoke more slowly. "I'm here to help you. I'm not Sara, but I know something about sentinels."

"Dwayne vs Morton Correctional Institution established that for legal purposes, a medical doctor is not equivalent to a guide."

"Right. I’m not covering the department's ass, legally. I’m here for you."

Oh. Grissom looked down at the clip-board he was still holding. Al took it away from him and waited patiently until Grissom looked up. "Symptoms?"

"Me? Nothing."

"According to Ecklie, you called this as a disaster--?"

"One of my people was unconscious, and two others were having hallucinations."

Al shook his head. "Nicky tends to be...high strung."

As far as it went, that was an understatement. Nick bounced back and forth between the kind of dangerous machismo you pick up as Texas cop and a sloppy over-involvement in his more emotional cases. "Getting a little tense occasionally is not in the same basket as having hallucinations. And even if you could make the case for Nicky--not Catherine."

Al sighed. "No, not Katherine. All right. Let's have a look at you."

Grissom briefly considered teasing Al about how his patients were usually dead, but it was obvious and hardly worth the effort. "You're sure we shouldn't get you looked at?"

"I haven't seen any of your people since night before last. I wasn't even in the building when everybody else went down. Hold still."

"Not everyone else," but Grissom held still, bracing himself for the exam he couldn't avoid.

Al didn't put on gloves, but touched him as a guide would, barehanded along skin. "You didn't see any hallucinations?"

"No, I didn't have a hallucination. I was talking to Sara. We were...deciding about dinner."

"How have you been eating lately?"

"Don't start. That has nothing to do with the question at hand."

Unlike most doctors of Grissom's experience, Al didn't grab, he stroked. He slid a hand beneath Grissom's shirt and splayed warm fingers against his chest. With his free hand, he motioned Grissom to breathe. "Well, your lungs are clear, but you need to calm down. Your heart rate is about ninety-five."

"I'm a little worried about Warrick. But mostly, it's just all the noise."

Al froze. "Noise?"

Grissom gestured helplessly at the air. "On my body."

He saw Al understand. "It must be pretty bad in here," he said. He gently tugged Grissom into the circle of his arms. Since he'd stopped practicing as a guide in the field, Grissom hadn't touched anyone but Sara, and she didn't touch him with any particular affection. It was a choice, he knew, to make him feel safe. He had told her--almost in so many terms--that he could trust her with his life as his guide or with his heart as his lover, but not both. She'd been completely professional since; both shield and safety net, guarding him carefully. After the disastrous surgery, she hadn't left his sight for two weeks.

Grissom had been too busy hating his dependence to miss the closeness he'd had with the other sentinels.

Al held him firmly and began to vibrate. It wasn't a prickling tease against his skin, but a solid, deep thrum that went to his bone. It blocked out the random buffeting that saturated the hospital, and the relief was like giving up a heavy weight. Grissom's shoulders relaxed and he took a deep breath. "You're humming," he said.

Al didn't answer. Probably because Grissom couldn't see his face anyway. The rhythm that resonated through their bodies all but obliterated buffeting of air currents and biting vibration. It was like resting in the shade, after hours in the scalding, relentless, afternoon sun. It was like fresh air, after spending half the night in the morgue. It was like taking off his tie, after hours of court....

The ER doc finally came in. Grissom let Al speak for him as a guide would. It wasn't compliant with protocol, but Grissom didn't have the energy to defend himself from a strange doctor's quirks. Anyway, if Al was satisfied that Grissom was fine, that was all the answer he needed. He did give a blood sample, to be compared with the others' to help refine the investigation, but after that he signed himself out and went in search of Sara and Warrick. He didn't object when Al shadowed him.

Warrick was on an exam table, dressed in cotton hospital gown, apparently asleep. Sara was looming over him, arms folded, fierce scowl of concentration. She looked up as they entered the cubicle, and motioned them to be still. She checked, but Warrick didn't stir, so she chased them back out into the hall where they held brief meeting pressed against the wall so that they wouldn't block the busy rushing back and forth of doctors and nurses.

"You remember a year a go last summer? Weeping welts, fever, swelling inside the mouth?" She was speaking very quickly, but she enumerated the symptoms in AMSLAN. Grissom had no idea where she'd learned the obscure medical vocabulary.

"Sulfur compounds and perfume," Grissom said.

"It looked like it was going that way again. We'd started to spray him down with cortisone, we were two minutes away from intubating--and the whole reaction just...fizzled. The hives went down, he regained consciousness. He looks like he's stable."

"Surely, they're keeping him overnight," Al said.

Sara nodded.

"You're staying, too," Grissom said. She wouldn't want to turn Warrick over to the new hire.

She opened her mouth, shut it hard, nodded. "You shouldn't be alone."

"I'm deaf, not sick," he answered patiently. The day she was having, she deserved break.

"We don't know what happened, and it might have happened to Catherine and Nick, too. You spent the night on Catherine's couch when they repainted your condo in December--"

"All right, you win. Just...text me if there's any change, all right?"

***

 

Marcia fumbled the keys as she dug them out of her purse. Joel leaned down and scooped them up. It was sort of surprising. Usually, she was very graceful. Not like a dancer was graceful or a debutant was graceful. But her most casual movements were always as perfect as though she had choreographed them out days in advance. She never tripped, never made a second grab for anything, never bumped into anyone. Driving with her--the first times, it had been a nightmare. She zipped in and out of lanes without any apparent concern for the huge trucks and bad drivers around her. It was only after the third or forth (very reluctant) experience that he noticed her uncanny, nearly telepathic awareness of every car around them and what they were going to do next.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

She brushed gently against his fingers as she took the keys back. "I'm fine. It really isn't contagious."

Something clearly was wrong, though. Joel followed her in, asking, "Are you worried about Rodney?"

In the middle of putting her keys away, she looked up, surprised. "Yes, I suppose so...."

"You're not close," Joel said.

"You mean because he's a jerk?" She shook her head. "He is, but it's not important. Do you want something to drink? I think we have some beer?"

"Are you having any?"

She shook her head. She was on medication again. Joel didn't ask. "Got any apple juice?" It was a safe bet. They always had apple juice.

"And some left-over meat loaf, if you're hungry? It's emu, but Jack made it, so it's edible. We never did get dinner." She was saying all the right things, but something...was off in her voice, her eyes. Joel wished he had the nose that read minds.

As it was, all had was another guess. "Are you jealous? That Jack went with them?"

Her head already in the refrigerator, she froze. Slowly, she backed out, setting the a Tupperware container and a carton of juice on the counter. "No," she said tightly, "I'm just pissed because Jack's already made himself sick once this week solving other people's problems."

Joel wasn't quite sure what to say to that.

"Not that I don't--Jack owes them. We owe them." Refusing to look at Joel, she walked around him to the cabinet to take down plates. "I know that. And Jack won't be completely stupid again so soon."

Joel poured them each a tall glass of juice. "They were very helpful, after the shooting," he said neutrally.

"There's mashed potatoes and left-over peas in the fridge. No. Before that."

"I don't understand."

Her quick, precise fingers filled the plates with left-overs. "He was different, before. And it wasn't, well, it wasn't good. The way he was."

Joel was used to being the nice guy people talked to. In interrogations, he was always the good cop. On the other hand, a lot of interrogations were easier than a 'serious' conversation with Marcia. "Before he was disabled."

For a moment, her hands stilled. "No. Before the research." After that mysterious pronouncement, she covered the plates and stacked them on the rack in the microwave. "The research--I thought it was just strange when he started. Completely ridiculous. Although, I mean, it was Jack so...any thing he wanted, you know?"

"You didn't try to talk him out of it."

"No. But...at first it didn't help much. I mean--he was talking about all this weird, useless stuff and he was still...pretty messed up."

"Messed up how?"

She compressed her mouth slightly, shaking her head. Jack's secrets, whatever they were, were on the list of things she wouldn't discuss except in very vague terms. Also on the list was her time working for the government and the details of sentinel-related health problems.

"I wasn't here," she said. "We didn't speak very often. But one day I came to visit, and Jack was...better. Good, even. And the research still didn't make any sense to me, but--"

"You never cared about the research, you only cared about him," Joel said.

"And whatever happened, John and Rodney were part of that."

"So...you owe them."

Instead of answering, she turned back to watch the food go around in the microwave.

Joel went to the sink and washed his hands with the bar of hypoallergenic milk soap. "Jack talks about how important it is to have friends."

She muttered an answer.

"I'm sorry--?" he prompted.

"McKay's a bad bet. Jack's all...wrapped up in them and--Joel, it really is a question of when, not if he's going to die. It's going to end badly, and Jack--"

"Well, of course it's going to end badly. That's usually what 'ending' means--unless what's ending is pretty bad to begin with."

The microwave beeped. Marcia rotated the top and bottom plates and turned the microwave back on.

"Marcia--"

"You don't understand."

"I was at an arson last week. A duplex over on Welleston. The place went up so fast we were looking for bits of bomb."

"Joel, I really don't think--"

"There were two kids. Unlike most fire victims who are killed by smoke inhalation, they were actually burned alive--"

"You don't--"

"If McKay lives to ninety, it's going to end badly. If you live to ninety... it's going to end badly."

Body rigid, eyes hard, she turned to face him. "So it doesn't matter? The when doesn't matter? The how doesn't matter?"

"It matters. But it's not a reason...to not even try."

"It's going to hit Jack so hard when he dies. And that's not McKay's fault, but--"

"Do you think it is? That McKay...shouldn't have any friends? He should stay away from people? Because that would be easier? You just said that Jack was worse off before. You can't have it both ways."

She stood there for a long time, refusing to look at Joel. The microwave beeped, finally. Marcia turned around and retrieved the food.

***

Rodney stirred, looked around, made brief, reassuring eye contact with Jack, looked around some more. "Where's John?" he whispered.

"He went out to get a little air," Jack said. "He'll be back soon. And don't get that look. He didn't leave you alone."

"And you can handle me?"

"You know I can," Jack said. Lifted the cup of water from the nightstand and handed it to Rodney.

"I'm scared," Rodney said. It was a challenge, seeing if he could push Jack away.

"So were we," Jack admitted. "John's down in the chapel trying to pull himself together."

"Oh." Rodney looked at him. "What caused it? Because I could have sworn the room was okay--"

Jack took the cup back. "We don't know," he said.

"You don't know? You don't know and you think you're done being worried--"

"Rodney, it wasn't just you. Apparently a dozen sentinels went down at the same time you did."

"And this helps--how, exactly?"

"It means we don't start freaking out and searching you for symptoms of something rare and deadly, Rodney. It was sun spots. Or new kind of supersonic jet. Or nuclear testing in India."

Rodney closed his eyes. "Oh. Yes. How very reassuring. Um, Marcia?"

"She's fine. So is Jim."

"Oh, well, of course," Rodney rolled his eyes. "The big, macho police detective isn't going to pass out in front of a dozen witnesses." Rodney hid his face behind his forearm. "God. Those people are never going to look at me the same way again."

"Rodney," Jack said. He knew Rodney couldn't have had any illusions about how he'd been seen before. The people he worked with might be colleagues, but they were neither peers nor friends. His genius was intimidating, his senses an unfair advantage it would be hard not to resent in a competitive, academic department. Nearly dying at his own birthday party had been dramatic, but it probably wouldn't change anything, not really.

Rodney was still bemoaning his fate. "But of course, I pass out in front of the police officer. No, wait, two. And Marcia--she will never let me live this down. You don't suppose--you don't suppose Stephen will lose faith in me now? I mean, I can still do the work. My brain is still--"

"Rodney, hush," Jack said. He squeezed Rodney's hand warningly. "Give me a body check."

"I just passed out at the first birthday party I've had...well, in a long time. I think I have a little sympathy coming."

Jack thought about that. "You know, I can remember...I guess you'd call it 'blending in.' Sort of. It was probably a lot easier. I don’t think it was any better."

Rodney snorted. "You just hated it because you were spying on the Russians and killing people."

Jack sighed. "Yes, Rodney. You're right. I don't know anything at all about living with a social stigma."

His eyes were already drifting shut. "You're mocking me, aren’t you?" he muttered.

"Yes, but only because you're being sort of a bastard."

"Well, okay...."

Rodney had been asleep for about five minutes when John got back. He didn't stir when John took his pulse.

"He was up for while," Jack said. "Lucid." John nodded. "Any word from Sam Beckett?"

"I talked to Al again. They don't know anything." He let go of Rodney's arm and pulled back. "What the hell, Jack? I don't...get it. He's been good lately." He pressed his hands to his face, holding in tears. Jack inched his chair closer and put an arm around John's shoulders. "It's not fair...."

"No," Jack agreed. "Nothing is fair."

***  
~Thursday

Including layovers, the trip to Sierra Verde was going to take at least twelve hours. Just how much more than twelve hours was a mystery of changing time zones. Blair was tempted to just dig into the savings account Jim had made him set up--and which he mostly ignored--and spring for business class, but two of the planes they would be on didn't even have business class, and probably the entire trip would be an unsalvageable hell. He packed everything he could think of in his backpack, including a CD player and Jim's good headphones.

Wednesday night after dinner, Blair had rushed out to the book store to pick up the biography on Henry Jones for himself and a political satire for Jim. Simon was at the loft when he got back. He spent the night on the couch; they were leaving for the airport at 5:30 Thursday morning.

The two longest legs were first. These were also the largest, most, comfortable planes. On the first flight, Jim had gotten exit-row seating; plenty of leg room. Jim and Simon talked about old cases. Blair, half-listening, opened the book on Henry Jones. Who was, apparently, spectacularly nuts.

On the second flight, Simon and Blair had aisle seats and Jim sat next to Blair. "I'm going to try to sleep through this one," Jim said, digging out the head set. Blair pushed up the arm between them and let their hips brush together. He could feel Jim breathing slowly. Everything was fine.

He hoped everything stayed fine. It was risky, putting a sentinel on a plane for half a day. Especially on top of traveling yesterday, too.

After serving the snacks, one of the flight attendants paused beside Blair's seat and glanced down. "Good book?" she asked, flipping her hair and looking perky.

Blair blinked. "Oh. Well. Hysterical. It's very funny. Unfortunately for the poor guy it's about, he took himself very seriously." He shut the book and held up the cover so she could see it: Henry Jones in a pith helmet and khakis, standing in some severe-looking ruins.

The flight attendant's eyes widened. "Are you going to Mexico to visit the ruins?"

"No, further south. Sierra Verde."

"Oh, very nice. My best friend Cindi went on her honeymoon there. Very romantic. Perfect white beaches. Moonlit coves. Mysterious jungle."

"I'm afraid I'm going on business."

"Wow. Shame. No adventure for you, then."

Blair sighed dismally. "Probably more adventure than I want...."

When the flight attendant moved on to answer a signal light, Jim carefully took off his ear phones and scooted a bit in the seat so he turned toward Blair. "So," he said. "Pretty girl."

"I guess," Blair said. He opened the book and flipped to the index, wanting to skip forward to the "Temple of the Sentinels" bit.

"So, I'm putting it at, what? February Chief?"

"What February?" Blair asked in confusion.

"Since you dated," Jim's voice was hard. "Because of me, I assume. Is there a technical word for it? Separation anxiety, like they have for kids? Or is it something worse?"

Blair undid his seatbelt and slid to the edge of his seat so he could angle in Jim's direction. "Christ, Jim, it wasn't like that." The book, forgotten, slid off Blair's lap and jammed between them. "It wasn’t like that?"

"Just what was it like, then, Chief?"

"You were just starting to get really healthy last winter, Jim. You needed all of my attention. It wasn't a big deal."

"It's been almost eight months, Sandburg. And you're--you're still ignoring pretty little--"

"Jim! It's not like there's a future in picking up someone I met on the plane. And for the last half a year, we've been kind of busy. For that matter--I'm going to be kind of busy in the immediate future. Remember?"

Jim rubbed the bridge of his nose. His breathing was fast and shallow. "For me," he whispered. "You've been making stupid sacrifices for me--"

"Jim, stop, okay? Stop." He reached out and shielded Jim's eyes with his hand, and leaned as close as he could, trying to block out the noise and stink of the plane. "Breathe. It wasn't a big deal. I was making...a big transition professionally. Right? Finishing school? Going full time at the PD? And you were finally getting on your feet. I didn’t have time to date. It didn't matter. It doesn't matter, Jim."

"I got sick," Jim said. "When you went out...I was getting sick."

"You needed more of my time. That was all."

"Why have you got my eyes covered? Am I a horse now, Chief?"

"Right. Sorry." Blair didn't pull back, but he shifted his hands to Jim's shoulders. "Not a horse." He smiled thinly. "Jim--it's okay. Really."

"It stops. I mean it. You don't put your life on hold any more."

"Well, geeze, Jim. Do you mind if we solve the current case before you start setting me up?"

Jim looked away. "Yeah. Okay."

"Can you relax for me? We've got a long day ahead of us. And this is the easy part. When we get there...."

Jim nodded. He started to settle back into his seat, but paused. "Listen, Chief. I don't want...."

"I know, Jim. It's okay."

"It's not that I don't appreciate--Because I do. It means a lot. But you can't...."

"Okay, okay." Blair nudged Jim back and then pulled a thin cotton blanket out of his backpack. It smelled like home. Blair spread it across Jim's lap. "I get it. You need to relax, though, okay? It's all right. I hear you. And it's cool."

Jim nodded tightly.

Blair retrieved his book and pretended to read until he felt Jim sag into his shoulder as he fell asleep.

The layover in Mexico City was short. The airport was nice and busy. The weather through the windows calm and bright.

Jim balked when Blair wouldn't let him go looking for food. "What is this, prejudice? Sandburg, you're the last person--"

"Absolutely. I am the last person to let his sentinel eat foreign, airport, fast food while he's traveling in the middle of a big case. No. Simon can eat what he wants."

"You let me eat on the plane."

"Right. World-class bland, Jim." He handed over a baggie of organic, cinnamon-roasted almonds from the co-op back home. "Protein, fiber, calories. Go to town."

Jim and Simon shared surprised, amused looks, and Simon went off to find something to snack on while the waited.

After Mexico City, Belize City. After Belize City, Sierra Verde. Trudging through the last airport, exhausted and stinky, they formed a sad knot at baggage claim. "I thought this was a huge tourist destination," Simon said. "Why is it such a bitch to get here?"

Jim jumped as the luggage carousel honked loudly and lurched to life. "Tourists have a direct flight from Dallas-Fort Worth. But those flights were booked for the next three days. Going back should be better."

The hotel was one of those chains that deal with tourists. Not Blair's first choice for either aesthetically or morally, but predictable, which was what they needed under the circumstances. It was only about ten o'clock at night, local time, but about one a.m. at home. Jim hadn't been able to get two singles close enough together, so he and Blair were sharing a double, a decision Jim had made without any help or hints. Simon was on another floor. In the room, Blair handed Jim the last of the bottled water, and pulled open Jim's duffle. The sheets were packed on top.

"What are you doing? Sandburg, don't play maid here--"

"It's a guide thing. We change sheets. And I think this is my first time, so let me enjoy it."

"I’m sure the sheets are fine."

Blair shot him an irritated look and balled the hotel's sheets into a wad and set them on the dresser. "Hey!" Jim said. "Okay, seriously, you didn't change the sheets at St. Sebastian's."

"It was a sentinel monastery. Right? All cotton, high thread count, washed in phosphate-free, fragrance-free soap? Go take a shower and quit kibitzing the guide."

Jim made a face. "All right, if they have to be changed. But you don't have to do it. It won't hurt me to touch them."

"It's traditional, all right. A guide thing." He turned his back on the bed. "You've just ruined it for me. My first time. Always with the fussing and complaining. This was supposed to be a proud moment, too. I'll probably have to go into therapy now. Thank you very much."

Jim laughed until he lost his balance and sagged onto the second bed. "Oh, right. And now you're on the wrong bed. All my work for nothing--" Jim was still laughing when Blair chased him into the bathroom to shower.


	2. Chapter 2

~Friday

Simon was knocking on the door before 8:00 local time the next morning. Resentfully thinking things like 'bright eyed and bushy tailed' and 'bastard,' Blair dragged himself out of bed and opened the door. Any grumbling he might have done out loud was cut off by the sight of the coffee and pastries Simon was carrying. "I might marry you," he said instead.

Simon smiled cruelly. "I just got off the phone with Joel. You need to call your boss. He's been looking for you."

"My boss." Oh, crap. "Jack."

Simon handed him a cup of coffee. "Good luck with that."

Blair started for the phone, spun back and headed for the shower. It was too early go call Cascade. Jack wouldn't appreciate being dragged out of bed to yell at Blair.

Jack would be pissed if Blair put it off. Blair headed back to the phone, stopping when he pictured Marcia's face when she realized what idiot student had interrupted Jack's sleep.

He should have just explained before they left--Jack would have understood--

That Jim was having hallucinations, and instead of taking him to a doctor, Blair had headed for a tourist beach in the Third World. Jack would understand just fine.

Well, hell. It wasn't like Jack wasn't going to find out sooner or later. Blair had just been hoping that in the excitement of the arrests or whatever, Jack would forget to ask what they were doing there in the first place.

He compromised, finally, taking a slow shower and getting dressed before giving in and making the call to Cascade. Marcia didn't answer the phone by cursing him out, so he had hope that Jack was already up.

What little optimism he had faded when Jack greeted him with, "So, Blair. How's my sentinel."

"Um," Blair began.

"You do remember, right, that legally speaking, I'm responsible for Jim's health and wellbeing? You're just my proxy, my agent."

"Right. I'm sorry--"

"How did he handle the flight?"

"He did great. He's in the shower now. Jack, look, I know it's not fair. If you want to file the paperwork to terminate your supervision--I never meant to put you in a legal bind--"

"Wrong answer, Blair."

"Wrong answer," he repeated miserably.

"According to Joel, Jim is on personal time. What he does and with whom he does it is not the concern of the Cascade Police Department or its contract with Rainier University. Or me, as an employee of the university. And that is what you will tell anyone who asks."

"Yes, Jack," Blair breathed gratefully. His own guilt had blinded him to the obvious out.

"But that's not why I wanted to talk to you." He chuckled dryly. "Although, you seem to have beaten me to my news."

"Um? Oh?" Blair still felt terribly slow.

"A former co-worker came by last night after dinner. A good friend. He showed me a picture of your Lee Brackett in the company of a woman who is suspected of being a part-time sentinel hit-woman and Bud Torin, vice-president of a major oil company."

Jim came tearing out of the bathroom, naked and dripping wet, to stare at the phone.

"Really?" Blair asked. "Where were they?"

"Well, they were in LA. Right now, the businessman is here in Cascade. Brackett and the woman...we don't know. But right now I'm holding a list of places Toren has been during the last year. He's been to Sierra Verde seven times."

"No shit," Blair whispered.

"Much shit," Jack answers. "Blair, how did you--"

"I--Jim had a hunch. I can't explain it."

"Blair, that's not an answer."

"Well--if he got a tip, he didn't tell me where. Jack--you've got more than we do. Please--"

"Sierra Verde is just one on a long list of destinations, Blair. And if he was doing anything shady there, I don't know what it was."

"What about the...sentinel hit-woman?"

“She's also an art forger."

"Ouch."

"Yes, the mind boggles. We've been wondering just what her involvement in all this is. "

"Is she--she's not using Brackett as a guide, surely," Blair said. Even a hardened criminal didn't deserve Brackett.

"There's no record of her working with a guide for the past few years. She may not need one."

"Jack--what's going on? Really. What the hell?"

"I don't know. But whatever is going on, you're probably in the right place. Blair. I don’t have to tell you to be careful. "

"I know, Jack."

"Blair. Remember that this is Jim's area. He has a lot of experience dealing with very dangerous people. Listen to him. "

Blair met Jim's eyes across the hotel room and swallowed. "Okay."

"Check in again in a couple of days. I may have more for you then."

In the silence that followed, Jim went back into the bathroom and rinsed off. He returned half a minute later, drying his hair and filling Simon in on the half of the conversation he hadn't been able to hear.

Simon scratched his chin. "Sandburg? You got your student ID?"

Obligingly, Blair took it out and passed it to him. Simon chuckled. "Well, how about that, Jim. It says 'Anthropology' on it. That's primitive peoples, isn't it?"

"We don't use the word prim--" Blair began.

Jim reached over Blair's shoulder to appropriate the ID. "Oh, ho. How about that?"

"What?" Blair asked.

Jim grinned. "You're going to walk in the front door of the local Cyclopes Oil office and tell them you're a graduate student studying the effects off habitat loss--"

"How about 'natural resource management,'" Simon put in.

"On local tribes."

"But--Jim I don’t know anything about the local--"

Simon laughed outright. "That's okay. They won't talk to you about that. Your job is just to get Jim in the door and keep him there for as long as possible. Let him look around. Maybe overhear something."

Blair blinked. "Oh," he said.

***

Sandburg insisted on stopping to buy a tape recorder. And an earring. And a small notebook. Jim had to admit that he suddenly looked more like a grad student than he had when he was on campus full time at Rainier. The local business office for Cyclopes Oil was small, taking up not even all of the second floor of a three story building downtown. Blair was polite and soft spoken, asking to see whoever was in charge of land management locally, and when he was refused, asking the secretary polite and horrifying questions until she freaked out and passed him on to someone else.

The someone else tried to get rid of them by making him wait in a plain but expensive outer office, which Sandburg said he was happy to do, since he didn’t have an appointment. He sat reading the oil company literature while Jim wandered around the room pretending to look out the windows but mostly listening to what was being said in other offices.

After almost two hours, a woman in a pink suit appeared and asked if she could help them in a tone that clearly said she thought it was a shame they wouldn't just drop dead. Sandburg began the spiel again about being a graduate student about to begin a six-month field study with the local something-or-other. He prattled on for five minutes, making up stuff that sounded very serious: 'ethno-botany,' 'environmental semiotics,' 'commoditization.'

The woman in pink was looking dazed when she finally interrupted to ask who Jim was. "Oh, that's Eddie. He's an American the university sometimes uses when they have a project down here. I've hired his boat to take me upriver to Dumazel day after tomorrow. But, what I really need to know--" And Jim tuned him out, confident that Blair could talk all day.

The problem was, there was nothing incriminating to listen to. On the left, they were doing payroll. On the right, accounts payable. Across the hall they were supposed to be doing the budget, but they were talking about soccer instead. Jim moved his attention from room to room. He could, if he really tried, focus his hearing on the far end of the hall, though it was giving him a headache. And for nothing. That was the local bigwig on the phone long distance with his wife, trying to convince her he wasn't a rat bastard. He didn't sound convincing, but that might just be because Jim had spent part of the morning listening to him make out with his mistress there in the office.

When Jim phased back into the conversation, he discovered just how well Sandburg had been doing. The woman in pink was in the middle of a convoluted spiel about Cyclops Oil's dedication to the natural environment and the protected minorities. It had donated money to set aside a thousand acres of protected wetlands in the Bunai swamp just up the coast, and was sponsoring a program to help one of the local Indian tribes with sustainable rubber farming.

"Your charity work is very commendable. But what I was really wondering is how close your drill sites are to restricted lands--"

When they left, forty minutes later, Jim had a pounding headache, but Sandburg had a backpack full of pamphlets, leaflets, and maps. The sunlight outside was like knives in Jim's eyes. He fumbled for his sunglasses and trudged mindlessly forward. The pain was bad enough that he thought he might be sick there on the sidewalk, but they were still within site of the building, and he didn't want to do anything memorable.

The downtown area--at least that part fit for foreign business and tourists was small. It would only be a nine-block walk back to the hotel. Behind his sunglasses, Jim kept his eyes shut and followed Blair by smell. The jarring of his feet on the sidewalk hurt all the way up his spine and into his skull. The peaceful ocean breeze that had been lauded in posters at the airport smelled like rotten fish.

When Sandburg finally seized his hand and gently body-blocked him into a brick wall to one side of the sidewalk, Jim sagged with relief. He didn't know how far they still were from the hotel, but a moment of rest--

"Talk to me, Jim? How sick are you? Give me something--"

"Headache," Jim gasped. "My hearing is all fucked up--I can barely hear you."

"Just relax. You did great, but you're done. Let it go." His hand coiled around Jim's wrist, monitoring by pulse....Strangely, knowing that he was watching seemed to make his pulse slow down.

After a few minutes, Jim was able to pull it together and open his eyes enough to follow Sandburg down the street. When they were finally in the hotel room again, Jim let himself be settled on the bed with a damp towel over his eyes. He concentrated on breathing, slow and shallow so his stomach wouldn't rebel.

"What happened Jim? Was there something in that office--"

"Not a chemical. I just pushed too hard. For nothing, the whole trip a God damn zip--"

"All right. All right. In science, even a negative result is a useful result."

"Sorry, Chief. I really...I blew it."

"Oh, yeah. Completely. It was only fourteen hours or so you were traveling yesterday. And then today, hell, any idiot can conduct surveillance on fifteen or twenty people for several hours at a time. Really, what's the matter with you? I swear, I'm trading you in when we get home."

Jim started to laugh. The pain that felt like it was ripping his head in half made him regret giving in to a moment of levity. Sandburg picked up Jim's left hand and dug his fingers into two pressure points on the palm. That hurt. Badly. But the pain in Jim's head eased back enough that he could breathe.

Sandburg didn't talk for a long time, just pushed back the pain with his ruthless fingers and waited. He didn't move until Simon knocked on the door. Jim stayed on the bed while they settled at the table and Simon and Sandburg whispered together over how Simon's morning had gone.

When he tried to follow their conversation, the headache, which had settled into a nice, background buzz, swelled rhythmically in time to Jim's heartbeat, so he focused on the feel of the mattress beneath him instead.

The scream, when it came, was from no specific direction Jim could focus on. He couldn't get up to go looking for it. He couldn't move at all.

Asleep, then. Dreaming, or worse than dreaming.

The scream cut off suddenly, leaving a horrible silence in its wake. Jim was dimly aware of Blair and Simon, still shuffling papers and talking quietly. Deliberately, he turned away from them, stepping inward, to a thin, grey place--

There was a young, blond woman. She was thinner than her pictures. She was sitting on the ground, doing a complicated breath pattern. Beside her huddled a mangy meerkat and a large raccoon, which alternately shook and growled.

"Catherine Olivia Gatling," Jim whispered.

She raised her head and looked at him. "Katie," she said. "Katie Gatling. Who are you?"

Jim opened his mouth to answer and froze. Who was he? It was on the tip of his tongue to say, "Ellison, Cascade PD." It was stupidly formal, but it had always been true before. Profoundly true, enough to answer anything.

Today it felt like a lie. An insulting lie. "Inqiri," he said. Maybe that was true, although he could only dimly remember being that. He peered into the emptiness around them. "Katie, where are you?"

"I don't know," she said. "I think it's one of the places I go when I'm in the tank." She looked down at the animals. "I don't know how I got here. I wasn’t in the tank."

"Katie--"

"Doctor Stewart was in the tank...with Tempy. Doctor Stewart died--"

"Katie--"

"Shawn was throwing himself against the wall, yelling. He was so angry." She looked down at the Raccoon. "I think Tempy put us here. So we'd be safe."

"Katie, I'm looking for you. I'm coming. But I need to know where you are."

"I don't know where we are! I don’t know how we got here--I wasn't in the tank. I didn't drink the tea. I don't know how we'll get back--" Her frustration and anger made the grey void around her shimmer.

The meerkat stood up, looked at Jim balefully, and pushed at Katie with its head.

Just like that it was all gone: the girl, the animals, the empty place....Jim was lying on the hotel bed, a soggy cloth over his eyes and Blair and Simon still at the table.

Fucking useless visions.

Jim sat up, tossing the damp cloth in the direction of the bathroom. His headache was nearly gone. He got up slowly and crossed to where Sandburg and Simon were still working. They had a bag of Sandburg's granola open between them. Jim drained half of Blair's bottle of water and took a handful of granola. "What have we got?" he asked.

Simon grinned. "I told them I was tracking a suspected hit team from Cascade and that I had reason to believe that their target worked for Cyclopes Oil. The local police were very helpful." He gestured to the piles of paper scattered across the small hotel table. "The best part is lists of the property Cyclopes controls."

Blair nodded. "If they are holding five sentinels captive, they're not doing it at the corporate headquarters. Too bad, by the way. Very inconvenient. But they have several houses they keep for supervisors and visiting experts. And a warehouse. And--"

"Four sentinels," Jim whispered. "Jack Stewart is dead. Today, I think."

Simon rubbed his face. "And how do you know that?"

"I don't know. Does it matter? He's dead." He finished off Sandburg's water. "They've got to be away from everything. They aren't low key. What do they have outside of the city?"

Simon had been trained as a city cop. His world was full of alleys and freeways and ports, not swamps and mountain passes. Jim had to explain as he picked through maps and a few aerial photographs. The Xeroxed sheets Sandburg had been given at the local offices had the locations of nature preserves, archeological sites, and areas set aside for indigenous peoples along with the cross-hatches showing where the oil company was drilling and lines showing were the pipeline ran.

Where did you keep a group of prisoners? Because they were being kept. You wouldn't want a lot of traffic there. Nor a lot of ignorant employees going in and out, seeing too much. Someplace you still had buildings, though, maybe a major site that had petered out and been shut down.

Unfortunately, the documents Sandburg and Simon had didn't indicate the age of the sites or which ones might not be operational at the moment. Jim went though the pages one at a time, then turned to the aerial images, slowly collating them to the maps of varying quality. Eventually, he gave up explaining; neither of the other men could follow what Jim was doing.

At some point, Sandburg slipped out to do some shopping. He might have said exactly what, but Jim couldn't remember later. While he was gone, Simon ordered room service: burgers and beer fried plantains. Sandburg arrived just after the food and groused about cholesterol.

One of them brought over a plate, and Jim ate without lifting his eyes from the pages spread out before him, careful to keep his greasy hand away from the photos.

"Huh," Jim said suddenly, and choked on a fry that went down the wrong way.

Sandburg was there at once, worried, not at all helpful. Jim pushed him aside, gulped what was left of his flat beer, and held up one of the aerial photos. "Look," he gasped. "This has to be it."

It was dark outside. Simon's shoes were off and he smelled like sleep when he came over to peer over Sandburg's shoulder.

"I don’t get it," Sandburg said.

"It's listed as a well site," Jim explained.

Sandburg shook his head.

"The road's overgrown. Hardly used at all. For years. And the pipeline is nowhere near there." Jim picked up the relevant map and showed them the pipeline, over eighty miles away.

"So it's an abandoned well site--" Simon began irritably.

"With a helicopter landing pad?"

They just looked at him.

"There. Look. That little clearing. And there's something here under the trees. I can't tell what it is, but, I don’t know. Some kind of structure?"

Into the silence that followed Sandburg breathed, "Oh, my god. Jim, you've found them."

Jim got up and walked carefully into the bathroom. He just made it to the john before he threw up.

~Saturday

Jim woke up the next morning to sunlight blazing around the edge off the heavy hotel curtains. It was late, he realized. Blair was already on the phone with Jack in Cascade.

"--go on so long is unusual, but given the task he was performing, not surprising. As long as you're watching to make sure he's getting his bodily needs met, it's not dangerous."

"For other sentinels, maybe. But Jim doesn't zone like that. Not for hours at a time. What if something goes wrong--"

"Blair. He's been on line barely eighteen months now. We don't know what's normal for him. He is just now figuring out how he works best, what his limits are, what approaches are easiest. You can't let your comfort zones dictate his development. And frankly, you're the last person I would expect to freeze up about this. Let him be. If something goes wrong, that's why you're there. And you'll cope with...whatever you need to cope with."

"Okay," he whispered. "I hear you."

"Now, there's another problem. Yesterday, Julia Karedis died. She was driving back from lunch and had some kind of seizure. The car went off an embankment. Michelle was with her--she broke her left arm and her nose. Julia...died at the scene. "

"Oh my god," Sandburg whispered.

"It's not clear yet, whether the seizure killed her or the accident."

"Oh," Sandburg breathed. "Has anyone else--"

"Marcia got sick at work. She had to come home and lie down. Rodney was in his office on a conference call. They, ah, had to call another ambulance. Mike is all right. And your friend Adrian."

"Fuck."

"Blair. Has Jim been seeing animals?"

"He does, sometimes," Sandburg hedged.

Jim sat up stiffly. "Tell him the truth," he hissed.

"A lot."

A sigh at the other end of the line. "More often recently?"

"Yes, more than usual."

"It may be a sign of increased brain activity, and related to the waves of simultaneous episodes. Right now, nobody knows what's causing them or who is vulnerable. Blair, the thought of you and Jim working a case in a foreign country while this is going on--"

"Jack, we've got a lead. We're close. We can't quit now--"

"I realize how important this case is. But you've seen what these attacks look like. This is dangerous. So far, they aren't fatal, but we haven't got the autopsy on Julia back yet."

"Jim thinks...the animals and the attacks are related to something that is happening to the sentinels here. In Sierra Verde."

"Is he basing this on anything?"

"I don’t know." Sandburg met Jim's eyes nervously. "Intuition, I guess. You know what they're like when they start putting things together."

"Blair? Is Jim cognitively compromised? Is that what you were trying to tell me before?"

"No. Absolutely not."

"Are you sure, Blair? I know it's a hard thing to admit, but if Jim's been affected by whatever is happening...."

"He's fine. Jack, I promise. He's emotionally involved with the case, but he's making progress on it. He zoned for a long time last night, but he found the pattern in the data. He's seeing animals, but he knows the difference between what's in his head and what is in the room with us."

"I couldn't force you in if I wanted to," Jack admitted.

"He wouldn’t be any safer in Cascade."

"No. He wouldn't. Damn."

"I don't know when I can call again. We'll probably be pretty busy for the next couple of days."

Jack sighed tiredly. "I don't have to tell you to be careful."

After Blair hung up, he said to Jim, "You're not crazy, right?"

"I'd say I was definitely crazy. But me being crazy isn't making those other sentinels sick. Who is Julia Karedis?"

"She's a sentinel who does fire inspections for the city. Her guide started graduate school with me. Michelle. They've only been together for a few months." He looked away. "Jack is supervising her practicum. He was her advisor from the beginning."

"Whatever Cyclopes Oil did to Dr. Stewart yesterday didn't just kill him. Sentinels felt it from thousands of miles away."

"Do you have an idea? What they're doing?"

"No. From what Katie said, I think they don't understand what's happening to them."

"Katie?"

"Katherine Gatling. She talked to me this time. But I don't know who--or what--she thought I was. Or if she thought I was even real." A horrible thought wound its way through Jim's brain. "They're messing with them. They're making them dream. Or--god, hunting their animals or something."

"To kill them?" Blair asked weakly.

Jim rubbed his face, trying to scrub away the trace of headache that was teasing behind his eyes. "There are easier ways to kill us than that. Guns are cheap. Hell, a bottle of perfume is cheaper than a gun. Sandburg--this is hurting people at a tremendous distance. If they could perfect that--"

"So this is what? Weapons technology? Something that you could use for extortion? Give us all your money or we'll kill your sentinels? This is an oil company, Jim. Evil, yeah, but not this kind of criminal."

"It doesn't have to be a company project. Ask Stephen what happens when one or two executives gets a clever idea of how to make some money quick. Here is a chunk of unused land in the middle of nowhere with a helicopter pad. Oh, boy."

"Oh," Sandburg said. "God. Jim, if they've found a way to mess people up completely at a distance, what are they doing to the sentinels they have here? They're really experimenting on human beings. We need to tell the local police."

"Tell them what? We don’t have any evidence. No one has seen Brackett or his accomplice or the victims. All we've got is a ridiculous story about our friends at home getting sick. As a cop, I have to tell you, that won't wash. We'll take a camera, go out, do some recon. If we need help, we'll bring them pictures." Jim heard Simon in the hall. He pushed thoughts of a machine that could make dozens of sentinels collapse at the same time out of his mind and got up to answer the door.

Simon was carrying a backpack. He hadn't brought one with him, so he must have picked it up here. "Are you awake, finally? How are you doing?"

"Fine," Jim said. "Give me ten minutes and we can be on our way. We'll need to take the rental car back and get something off-road--"

"Done. Where do you think I've been?"

"I was hoping you were out scoring weapons," Jim admitted.

"Did that yesterday. We could have had this conversation then, but you were zoned. Scary as hell, by the way."

Sandburg stood up briskly. He didn’t look freaked out, but he smelled worried. "Simon, why don't you and I load the car and check out. Maybe line up some breakfast. Jim can shower and get dressed."

"Sandburg," Simon said patiently, "you don't shower before going on a stakeout in an abandoned oil field in the jungle."

"You do if you're a sentinel. Jim, I'll leave you with the dirty clothes bag and a change of clothes. Remember to bring the soap and shampoo with you." He paused, looking at Jim hard, checking him over. "We'll meet you out front in fifteen minutes?"

Jim nodded. What else was there to do? They had sketchy information and no back-up, but he'd known that going in.

In the hall, he heard Simon say, "Seriously, Sandburg, what the hell?"

"Let the man have five minute of privacy to get his shit together, okay? It's going to be a long day."

Jim was under the water, his hair full of lather, when he heard the spotted jaguar in the hall. Fuck. Sandburg and Simon were long gone. They hadn't left Jim a weapon. As calmly as he could, he leaned into the water and rinsed the shampoo out of his hair. It was hyper-allergenic baby shampoo; no use as a weapon, even against another sentinel.

He turned off the water when he got out. The sound of the shower wouldn't conceal anything from her. He dried off, although being slippery might give him a weird edge.

She was sitting on the bed when Jim opened the door. Even though Jim had known better, it was somehow a surprise to see a tall, blond woman, not a golden cat waiting there. She gave him a long look. "Very pretty," she said. "But get dressed anyway."

***

"Seriously, Sandburg, what the hell?"

Blair sighed. Jim had been on line and in Simon's own department for over a year now. He'd gone to workshops. He'd read the pamphlets. Being a sentinel didn't just go away. "Let the man have five minute of privacy to get his shit together, okay? It's going to be a long day."

"Just what can we expect?"

"How should I know? I don't have any experience abducting and experimenting on sentinels."

Simon savagely pushed the button for the elevator. "No, I mean from Jim."

"He's got the training for this," Blair said. "He has experience in the jungle...."

"Yeah...that worked out so well last time."

Blair took a deep breath. Trauma and isolation and culture shock. Grief. Violence. His senses on line. There were a lot of details Jim didn't remember...or at least wouldn't admit to remembering. The elevator doors opened and Blair followed Simon in, worrying. "He'll be focused on the case, not his own baggage. Jim is at his best when he's working. And this case--the only thing on his mind is going to be getting Brackett."

"Look. Sandburg. If he's not up to this--"

"He can do it. He didn't come all this way to not finish--"

The elevator doors opened.

It was hard to say who was more surprised: Lee Brackett or Simon and Blair. For a long second the three of them were frozen. The weapons Simon had obtained were locked in the trunk of the car. Blair could see the strap of a shoulder holster under Brackett's jacket, but his hand was reaching for the elevator button.

It was Blair who moved first. He leaped forward with no idea except to rip Brackett's head off with his bare hands. He got one good shot in, a satisfying punch that echoed a little in the elevator alcove.

He just got the one. Brackett was fast. He didn't hit particularly hard, but it hurt and Blair stumbled backwards, unable to find his balance or make his feet behave. While he was still trying to orient on where Brackett was, Blair was hit again, and this time he face-planted into the floor.

He heard a gunshot--painfully loud--and the sound of something breaking. Someone screamed--

When Blair finally pulled pushed himself up and squirmed around, he was just in time to see Brackett running away. There was broken glass everywhere, some kind of decorative mirror. Blair stumbled to his feet, glancing back--

Simon had blood all over his face, red on his dark skin, dripping onto his shirt. "Oh, my god! Simon. You've been shot--"

"No, it's glass. It's glass. Get after him--"

But Brackett was already gone and the hotel staff were already closing on them. Blair reached for Simon's face, brushing aside the blood with his hands, trying to see how badly he'd been cut.

The police showed up a few minutes later. They were upset. Blair could sort of see why, but he didn't have time to answer their questions. Especially when the concierge returned from a trip to their room to report that Jim wasn't there.

It was four hours later before the local police were finally convinced to let them leave. Even though they'd been unarmed and hotel guests--clearly the victims--this sort of scene wasn't popular in a tourist town that counted on a reputation for order.

The big worry, of course, was Jim. The police had sent someone to the room, but there was no sign of him. With Jim's senses, it was perfectly possible that Jim had simply heard that his companions were tangled up with the police, and had gone on without them.

On the other hand, if Brackett had known he'd been tracked this far, he might have sent someone after Jim. There was no sign of foul play in the room, but it wasn't like Blair could smell who had been there. There was no way to know for sure.

Blair was practically dancing to get on the road. Jim wasn't here so he had to be there. Simon retrieved his bag and produced a neat pile of papers and a calling card, which he took to the hotel "Business Center." He loaded the fax machine, dialed, and while the other end was still ringing, picked up a phone and dialed that, too. "Joel. You remember our little problem with The Crew last year? Same deal here."

Blair gasped, put his hand over his mouth to stifle the noise. Corrupt cops. Which--shit--would explain how Brackett had known how to find them, wouldn't it? Simon had been at the police station yesterday, asking all those questions.

"How are things at home?" He glanced over Blair's head, checking out the lobby. "How nice....sounds like this would be a good time to take a little break. Get away from things. Maybe hook up with our Canadian friends. Or, say, that Fed you got along so well with last year. Funny name. Wolf? Badger? Right, Fox."

Blair, understanding that this would be their last chance of contact before heading into the jungle, leaned over and said into the phone, "Sealie Booth. Jim left copies of all his files in his desk. It will have the contact information."

"You get that?" Simon asked. "No, I don't care. However you want to play it....Right away....Are you getting it? Great."

Simon hung up the phone and watched the rest of the fax go through. "We can't wait for help," Blair whispered, conscious that the phone might be tapped or the room might be bugged or a sentinel might be around a corner, listening.

"We're not going to," Simon answered. He collected the maps pictures from the fax machine and stormed out of the Business Center, leaving Blair to trail after him.

Another look at the room showed no trace of Jim, no hint where he'd gone. There was no evidence of a struggle, but if he was grabbed in the hallway--

Well, if he'd been grabbed in the hallway, the plastic sack with the dirty underwear wouldn't still be sitting on the dresser. So.

Simon was on the move again. He inspected the rental car for ten minutes before he let Blair approach and get in it, but then he peeled out of the parking lot like a NASCAR driver.

Simon left the tiny section of shiny hotels and high-rises for the docks. It was crowded and busy, but that didn't slow them down much. For several miles he drove along the coast, racing along tourist beaches, 'rustic' looking bars, and mysterious hotels in walled compounds. Simon wound around in circles for a bit, sometimes leaving the pretty new construction and the quaint, brightly-colored tourist-friendly Sierra Verde for small, battered houses, shacks, and abandoned buildings that had been left to rot rather than be demolished.

"Do you know where we're going?" Blair asked, as Simon turned onto a smaller road that passed between a honey factory on the left and a lovely new ranch house with a fountain in the center of the circle drive on the right.

"I know which way the highway is," Simon answered shortly. "But I want to make sure nobody is following us before I commit."

Blair had to admit that was smart, but he couldn't drag his mind away from the idea of Jim. Missing. Hours ahead of them. Taking by or pursuing people who killed sentinels.

At last Simon turned onto the highway, heading straight inland at last. Blair found them on the map, mentally calculated the distance to the turn off for the valley road, from there to the prospecting road....the distance on that unused dirt road to the site Jim had marked...the amount of time it would take....

Hours and hours, if the road was good. If they didn’t get lost. If Jim's guess had been right in the first place.

Simon was nervous. The highway wasn't so crowded that their car would be easily overlooked. On the other hand, it wasn't empty enough that they had the road all to themselves, either. Busses slowed things down. And curvy no-passing zones. Blair kept turning in his seat and looking back, but as far as he could tell, there was nobody behind them.

Away from the landscaped palm trees and flowering bushes, only a few grapefruit orchards interrupted the bushy secondary growth that crowded the road. There weren't any houses out here. The land, while not pristine jungle, clearly wasn't being used for anything. They drove through it all way too slowly. Blair ground his teeth.

Lunch was eaten on the road; some of Simon's beef jerky and Blair's endless granola. The good news was, with thin traffic and few exits, they had no trouble finding their turns. By mid-afternoon they were on a two-lane, badly-potholed road traveling along the edge of one of the smaller nature preserves. The trees here were older and the ground below them clear of bushes.

There were ferns. And strange palm trees with fronds starting just above the ground and waving fifteen feet in the air. The scale was large and a little intimidating. It was hot and the air conditioning in the rental car sucked, but under the ceiling of green leaves the sun wasn't very bright, and that helped.

Somewhere in this sort of green mess was Jim. Blair had never felt less at home with nature in his life.

When they cleared the preserve, they turned of onto a still smaller road. There had been logging here, and the secondary growth was a wild tangle of bushes. In the direct sunlight the car began to get hot. The road itself was in even worse shape. It was unlined--not that that mattered much, being only a lane and a half wide. They had to slow down. Simon, tired from steering around pits and breaks, gave Blair a turn at driving.

The last turn-off wasn't marked on the map, and was only visible as a questionable line on the aerial photograph. Blair slowed to a stop and looked at the overgrown track through the bush uncertainly. "What do you think?" he asked.

Simon looked at the maps spread out on his lap. "It's got to be this," he said, chewing nervously on an unlit cigar.

"Right. Okay. Let's go."

The track had never been paved, and baby trees had sprouted along the center. Deep potholes--if you could even call them potholes at this point--had been carved out by water, and once or twice the underbody scraped along the ground.

"We're not kicking up much dust," Simon said, glancing behind them.

"Well, it's a rain forest," Blair said irritability. It was good, though, that a huge cloud of dust wasn’t advertising their arrival.

The progress was slow. On a good stretch, Blair got the car up to 20 miles an hour. On the worst parts, he didn't manage even one. Only a couple of hours in, utter disaster struck: a tree down across the road. Simon had gotten a large hunting knife when he'd picked up supplies, but it wasn't enough to tackle a trunk as big around as Blair's thigh, even though the wood was very soft. Blair pushed at the tree from both sides, but of course it wouldn’t budge. He cursed miserably, his hands ranging over the damp bark. He wanted to be sick. Jim--

Simon dumped Blair's backpack at his feet. "Clean this out. Just what you need for sentinel emergencies. The rest will be food."

Blair got a hold of himself. Right. They would have to walk, that was all. Simon did have a compass. They had maps. They had supplies. It would take longer, but all in all they weren't that far away.

Jim--

They'd tried sticking to the road, but about a mile later they came to an abandoned test site. It and the road beyond it was badly choked with bushes and young trees. It was easier to go off the road; under the impenetrable shade of adult trees, the only things that could grow were ferns, and only a few of them. The ground was rocky and uneven and you had to watch because some of the vines were snakes, but there was plenty of space to walk.

Simon, it turned out, was nearly useless in the bush. He kept trying to touch things. And he tried to move quietly, which was not the way to scare off lizards and jaguars.

"Jaguars? Seriously, Sandburg?"

"The animal preserve is only thirty miles that way," he said. "And don't walk right up to water. I didn’t check about alligators."

"Hey, I think my mother has that plant in her house. The one with the purple leaves."

"Can we focus here, Simon, this is serious."

Simon shot him a 'no kidding,' look and said, "Have you been here before?"

"I've been to Belize. And Costa Rica. It's...kind of close."

"So, what's going to eat us?"

"Probably nothing. But stay out of water. And watch out for snakes. And scorpions."

Simon winced and glanced around involuntarily. They didn't have scorpions in the Pacific Northwest.

"Don't worry," Sandberg reminded meanly. "Hardly anybody dies from the scorpions."

After about an hour, a ravine cut between them and the road, pushing them back so they couldn't use it to keep track of where they were going. They pulled out the compass and map again, looking at the destination Jim had marked.

"Damn, it's getting dark already," Simon said. "I don’t know how we're going to travel at night."

"I don’t see how camping is going to be any safer," Blair protested, counting the hours Jim had been missing.

"Not walking off cliffs, not stepping on snakes, not walking into a guard outpost, not getting lost--Sandburg, you're not thinking clearly. We won't do Jim any good if we don't get there in one piece."

"We don't have to stop yet--"

"What about that spot over there?" Simon suggested, ignoring Blair's protest. "There's a gap in the trees."

"Well, what are we going to do there, sleep? It's covered with huge rocks. We might as well--"

"They aren't huge," Simon began, but Blair abruptly turned away and stalked over to the spot in question. "Sandburg!" Frantically brushing away leaf litter, Blair didn't answer. "Well, that was a quick about-face."

"Simon, it's a road!" he exclaimed, his fingers finding the straight edge.

"Sandburg, nobody would build a road that badly in the middle of a jungle going nowhere." He pointed to a cluster of trees that cut off the short segment.

Blair laughed. "God, no. It's going somewhere."

"What? You can't possible have gone crazy this fast."

"No, listen. The Mayans build roads like this a thousand years ago. They made two straight edges out off stone, filled the middle with rubble, and poured really good cement over the top to make it flat. The cement has worn away, but the rocks are still here." He jumped up and took the compass from Simon. "Look, it's going in the direction we want--it's going in the direction we want."

Simon considered the road speculatively. "Were these roads straight?"

"Well, I don't know. Not like Roman roads were straight, but maybe. Mostly."

"Sandburg!"

"Well, I'm not an archaeologist. I wouldn't even know this much, except Naomi was kind of eclectic, and Rainier has a project in the area and...I've been reading that book." Which they had left in the car, because they could not eat it or drink it or shoot with it. "Well, hell," Blair sank to his knees beside the road. "I know where we're going," he said. When he leaned sideways, he could see more of the road beyond the trees. Still headed in the right direction.

"I'm waiting," Simon said.

"That book I was reading on the plane, it was about an archaeologist. Sort of. He was a complete nutcase. A grandstanding nutcase. Everybody thought he was making it up."

"Making what up?"

"The lost temple of the sentinels. It was--well, Jones guessed it was some kind of Aztec spiritual center. A place where priests helped Sentinels find the secrets of the universe. Huge mojo, you know?"

"I thought you just said the road was Mayan," Simon protested.

"Exactly. What are the chances he got any of it right. And he couldn’t find it again, and nobody else could find it either....Anyway, the empires around here could be a lot harsher than Jones seemed to think. I mean, he was all romantic about it, but I can't see anybody building something so elaborate just so that a few people could reach a transcendental state."

"So, he made it up, or got it completely wrong--"

"But just because every legitimate anthropologist thinks the whole thing is a bad joke doesn't mean everybody does. What you said before, you were right. The Mayans didn't build roads going nowhere. And if this is leading to a ruined city or temple complex, maybe, I don't know, maybe somebody thinks it's the Lost Temple of the Sentinels."

"I'll buy that, but why would an oil company be any more interested in sentinel spirituality than some empire?"

"Unless that's not what it was really for? Jones was a complete nut. Or not all the temple could be used for...or, god, they have no idea what they're doing?"

"Shit, Jim," Simon muttered, "What have you gotten yourself into?"

Blair couldn't answer that, of course.

The sun had already set, and darkness settled quickly after that under the thick canopy of leaves. For a while they used Simon's flashlight to pick their way along the ancient road, but after a while even that became impossible. Blair narrowly missed twisting his ankle in a deep hole. "We're going to have to make camp," Simon said.

"No, we might as well keep going. It's not like we have any options for camping. If we sit down it might be on an ant's nest or something."

"Well--how did the Mayans live here way back when? In trees?"

"Hammocks, I think. Which we don't have--"

"I used to take Daryl camping." Simon swung his bag down and produced three packets of thin rain ponchos, several cans of sterno, and a bottle of insect repellent. "We can manage a ground cloth," he said.

"Where did you get that?"

"When I bought supplies, I asked the guy at the store what we'd need if we went hiking in the park. You know, the one that does eco-tours. And then I asked what we'd need if we got lost. Worst case, you know?"

"You bought bug repellent when you were traveling with a sentinel?" But Blair knew he had lost. They were going to camp, mostly safe on their little barrier of chemicals and plastic. Dinner was water and granola and dried apples. There was instant coffee, though, with water heated to lukewarm over the canned heat.

***

"Banister," Jim said, refusing to back down.

If she was put off by being identified, she didn't show it. "If you won't come, I'll just shoot you and leave you here. Inconvenient, but not a tragedy."

Jim reached for his pants. "I thought I was off your list," he said.

"But you've gone to such trouble to make yourself available." She smiled. "How could we pass it up? Anyway, recently we've come up short."

"I’m not alone here," Jim said. "Sandburg, Banks--"

"Won't be coming to your rescue. They aren't of any use to us alive." She waited, eyes unwavering, while Jim pulled on his clothes. When he was ready, she folded her sweater over her gun and fell into step behind him. She was a trained sentinel, and it showed. She'd know he was moving before he moved, she wouldn't hesitate to shoot, and she wouldn't miss when she did. There was no opportunity here.

She walked him down the back stairs, through the parking lot, and behind a closed snack stand at the edge of a small park. There was a car waiting, a large sedan. Without a word, she locked him in the trunk. Jim couldn't think of a better idea than to let her do it.

It took too long to quiet his breathing enough to listen for Sandburg. The street was already busy and the walls of the hotel were thick. Was that Blair, pissed off and talking a mile a minute? Or was it just Jim's imagination?

The engine started and Jim wrapped his hands around his ears, trying not to cry out at the painful racket. In the dark trunk, with the noise and the harsh smell of salt and old plastic, it could not have been his senses that detected Brackett's presence. Not one shred of evidence could have reached him, but still, he was sure. For a moment Jim was sick with shock, even though it was hardly a surprise.

Jim breathed through his teeth and tried to slow his heart. There was no point in trying for calm, but he couldn't afford to give in to the desperate terror that prodded him to throw himself frantically at the lid of the trunk. Brackett was hardly undefeatable. Yes, he was trained and ruthless, but Jim had training just as good. The only advantage Brackett had ever had was Jim's own ignorance and sickness. Jim wasn't ignorant or sick any more.

And Blair and Simon--Simon was no pushover and Blair was smart. Jim had to trust them to be fine. To have an advantage of their own, in fact: the enemy had to think they were still floundering. They couldn't know that Jim had figured out where they were based. Simon would come and bring the local police. Jim just had to keep it together, play their game, slow them down.

Brackett hadn't paid a lot of attention to him when they'd been together. But Jim bet he could manage to distract him now.

When Jim vomited a little bitter mucus he told himself it was motion sickness. They'd pulled out onto the road, and he hadn't noticed, and that kind of thing could be physically unsettling.

It was a short trip. When Jim's eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that they were at a small airfield at the edge of town. Brackett and Banister both held guns on him. They smelled angry and resentful and refused to look at each other. Trouble in paradise. Jim forced himself to look bored and unimpressed as they escorted him to the waiting helicopter and cuffed his hands behind his back, securing him to a seat support.

The air trip was only about half an hour. The little landing pad was the one Jim had picked out of the satellite images. Jim kept his back straight and his eyes open, trying not to let himself think about Lee Brackett sitting in the front seat.

Brackett hopped out as soon as they landed and hurried away in the wind from the rotors. Banister waited until the pilot had shut the craft down and two armed thugs had appeared to cover him while she removed the cuffs.

Jim climbed down to the scarred earth that had been cleared to form the landing pad. He was in a fairly small and very odd compound surrounded by a high, chain link fence. There was one small, cement block building, two large tents, a very strange cluster of small, conical hills, and a low stone building. This last drew his eyes and made the rest fade away. It wasn't quite a ruin, though most of the decorated outer facing was gone and there was a small bush trying to grow on the roof.

Jim swallowed hard.

Bannister raised an eyebrow, her cool gaze ranging appraisingly over him. "Welcome to the jungle," she said wryly. With the barrel of her gun, she urged him toward the cement block building.

Jim walked forward as casually as he could. "Now would be a good time to cut your losses and run," he suggested.

She shrugged. "Soon, but not now. Not quite."

It wasn't a long walk. The interior of the cement building was divided into small cells walled by thick transparent plastic. "You're in luck," Banister said in that same wry voice. "We've recently had a vacancy."

It wasn't the empty cell that caught Jim's attention, it was the full ones. Four pairs of eyes watched him with a still silence that was sort of eerie. Glancing at them, Banister's composure flickered. "I've brought you a new playmate," she said. Her voice was just a little too sharp. "This is Detective Ellison from Cascade, Washington. He's come to rescue you." She opened the door to the empty cell. "Actually, my vote was for just shooting you in the head. I still think that's the best idea. One step out of line...I won't hesitate."

"Got it, thanks." Jim said, and sat down on the narrow cot while she locked him in.

The silence broke as soon as she stepped away from the door. "Oh...my...god!"

"Katie, be quiet," Brennan said.

"But look at him--"

"Hush," Brennan urged.

"Really, now would be a good time to be really, really quiet," Shawn Spencer hissed. "Or maybe start singing. Anybody know 'Yellow Submarine?'"

For several seconds the trapped sentinels stared at Jim in astonished silence.

"He's not real." This was Charlie Eppes, the battered meerkat that had been haunting Jim's daydreams. It was a relief to hear him speak. "This is some kind of mass hallucination. It doesn't just happen in the tanks anymore. We're crazy."

"Don't say that, either," Spencer said. "If she tells them we're useless, they'll just off us and start over."

Eppes looked away. "Unless crazy was the point." He laughed uneasily.

Jim stood up and moved close to the plastic barrier separating him from the others. "What's happening here? What are they doing?"

"Tell you what," Spencer said. "If you find out, let us know."

Jim swallowed. "They're testing some kind of weapon--"

Brennan shook her head. "No," she said.

"Yes," Eppes said.

"Worse," Spencer said, smiling wolfishly.

Katie Gatling turned away so she was facing the back wall.

"We're guessing," Brennan said. "I don't read Mayan and the archaeologist keeps a white noise generator on in his tent." She shrugged. "They tell us what they want, but they don't know what they're doing. Not really."

"They must want something," Jim protested. "Have some goal in mind."

She hesitated, glancing at Spencer, who started humming old Beetles songs. "Maybe you've noticed that sentinels are kind of...unpredictable and inconsistent," she whispered.

Jim nodded.

"Even the same sentinel, from one day to the next. We're tremendously useful, but complicated to work with. Difficult to integrate into any kind of formal structure. What's good for the goose is not good for the gander, and that gets difficult and expensive."

"I saw sentinels in the army--" Jim began.

"Not many. And usually not for very long. Do you think many make it to twenty years? It's a problem everywhere--every army, every employer, every government. I am considered reliable, and there are still places I can't go. Times I call in sick. I'm inconvenient."

"I've seen your file," Jim said. "You're worth the inconvenience."

"You're missing the point. The Mayans in Xel Che conquered their neighbors. The local empire covered most of Central America and lasted three hundred years. Mayans as a culture--They were ruthless and well-organized. But these Mayans--" she spread her hands, "and apparently part of what helped Xel Che dominate the region here was that they could use their sentinels more effectively than anyone else."

"And that's what this is all about? They're trying to replicate that?"

"They're trying to find out how the Mayans did it. How they turned sentinels into useful, obedient conformists. Reliable." She made a face. "It's not working."

"It was an accident," Jim realized. "They didn't mean to kill Dr. Stewart."

"He was fighting the tank. They left him in too long." She moved up against the barrier, trying to get closer, but all of Katie's cell separated them. "They'll want to test you. A new subject, what a windfall." Her voice dropped even further, her lips shaping the words with air only. "If they ask you to choose a partner, ask for me. I can try to protect you. I'm good in the tank."

Katie laid her forehead against the wall, letting the plastic transmit the vibration of her voice. "Don’t panic. It was fear that killed him. And whatever you do, don't forget who you are. Even if it feels good. Especially if it feels good."

Spencer stopped humming. Jim waited, but the trapped sentinels didn't say anything else. "What do you know about who's in charge?" he asked.

They shook their heads. "She listens," Katie mouthed. Banister, of course.

Jim tried a couple more times, but they'd said all they were going to.

"I saw your brother," Jim said, trying a new tack.

Eppes' head shot up. "How was he?"

"He's home. He's better."

Eppes turned so he was facing the cement wall and curled into a ball. It wasn't the result Jim was hoping for.

"Have you--have you talked to my dad?" Katie asked.

"No, there wasn't time. I'm sorry. Gus came to see me, though. And Agent Booth."

Brennan's head shot up.

"He thinks you've been taken by a drug cartel. That you've been murdered as some kind of message. We have to get out of here."

Her eyes hardened. "Let me know when you come up with a winning plan."

The guards who came to get him weren't sloppy, so Jim didn't feel the need to pretend to try to escape. Time, he needed time. Blair and Simon were coming. They might even arrive soon. Jim hung on to that thought.

The guards led him not to one of the big tents, but to the low ruin. There was a short anteroom, then a few steps down, a short corridor, and a larger room with a pair of stone pools filled with water, like rock bathtubs or ugly fountains. Brackett was there waiting. So was Banister and a jumpy, middle-aged man who must be the archaeologist.

Brackett looked at Jim with open dislike for a moment. "Well, maybe you'll be a better lab rat then you were a cop."

"Everybody's wondering," Jim said, almost conversationally. "Are you some kind of psycho, or just incompetent?"

Banister laughed. Brackett whiffed anger. For a moment, Jim was hoping he would be provoked into taking a swing. A fight would be distracting and eat up time. But Brackett just said, "If you don’t die in the tank, we'll talk about it later."

Jim's eyes were on the pools, the decorations around the sides. He'd been dreaming this, he realized. This place. That stone. The water, there, strangely warm. Without meaning to, his hand stretched out.

"He's eager," Brackett snorted. "You're not quite ready yet, Jimmy. Where's that doctor."

The exam was short and brisk. The doctor smelled like ammonia and garlic and speed. Jim managed not to flinch as the man touched him, pinched him, drew blood....

"I think we should try him the first time alone," the archaeologist said.

"We've done enough of that," Brackett said. "Let's throw him in with Eppes. Something's got to get a response out of that useless lump of rock."

"We'll get better results putting him in with Brennan," Banister said. She hesitated. "Maybe I'll volunteer. See what the fuss is about."

"Curiosity killed the cat," Brackett sneered. "Be my guest."

The idea that burst into Jim's mind at that moment was so perfect, so elegant, that he couldn't resist. It might even be right. "It won't work. It's not for two sentinels. It's for a sentinel and a guide." He tore his eyes away from the ominous tanks. "You have a guide lying around with the guts to go in?"

With a loud tear, the doctor removed the blood pressure cuff from Jim's arm. Jim managed not to flinch at the doctor's clammy hands. "There's no point," the doctor said. "There's nothing special about a guide."

"What do you mean?" Jim asked. "The guide has all the training."

"Merde!" the archaeologist was digging frantically through his notes, spilling paper everywhere. "That would explain--"

Jim smiled. "Too bad you're the only guide here, Lee. Think you can survive going into the tank just once?"

Jim knew from the way Bannister was grinning that he'd already won. The biggest delay was the archaeologist trying to figure out who went into which tank.

The headband they have him had metal knobs on the inside. The idea of these people looking at some kind of EEG was almost disgusting, but he told himself they could look at squiggles on a screen all day and it wouldn't matter. They'd never see the interesting parts.

The cup they gave him was full of some kind of bitter tea. There were things floating in it, bits of leaves and something that looked like a chewed twig. "My, how scientific." But he removed his outer clothing, drank without being urged, toed off his shoes, and climbed into the tank.

The water was warmer than the air and seemed to tingle against his skin. Jim's breathing shook a little as he struggled against a moment of panic. Whatever the Mayans had built this temple for, whatever the Cyclopes company was trying to do with it, the pools brought dreams. Dreams and animals, which Jim still couldn't help hating. And Jim was going in with his worst nightmare along for the ride.

Brackett was new to dreams, though, and Jim wasn't. Brackett had never faced animals. This was Jim's world, everything would be fine--

It hurt. Very badly, for a moment, as the tingling on his skin seemed to sink into his bones. Jim breathed, found he couldn’t move. The world flickered, rippled around him. "I'll have to remember to tell Sandburg he was right," he thought. It was the last coherent thought he had for a long time, and he had it over and over. He clung to it like a rope or a talisman, hoping it would lead to a next thought, unable to form one. The drug hit like a storm at sea, tossing Jim from one image to another like waves tossing a rowboat. Sandburg had been right; chemicals worked if you want visions, but it wasn't something you could actually use. Sandburg was right--

Colors cascaded past, colors with textures and taste. Jim flinched away and found himself face to face with sheets of breaking glass, shards falling, glistening in sunlight--

Fire, burning, so bright it hurt--a memory, the car Brackett had totaled trying to confuse the police. While he watched the image changed into Jim's current truck, the sixty-nine Ford, consumed in a shimmering ball of flame--

Dr. Brennan, sitting on the floor of her cell, meditating, trying to reach him. She couldn't cross over, not without the tea. She'd never found her blue dream on her own or called her animal without being desperate. Frustrated, stuck, afraid, she rubbed her eyes and tried again--

Simon in his office, smelling of frustration and anger. The sound of gunfire and Simon falling, smelling of blood.

Chemicals. The tea. Sandburg had been right, chemicals worked if you want visions, but it wasn't something you could actually use. Jim struggled against the shifting images. He saw Rodney McKay holding Jack Kelso cradled in his arms. McKay was frantic, calling for help--

He saw that first astonishing moment--and how had he forgotten this--when every insect, every bird had been as close as the palm of his hand, every drop of water a rainbow, the moment brilliant and entrancing. That had been before he'd known he was a sentinel. Before he'd begun to believe that enhanced senses were a death sentence.

He saw rain, in Cascade--and that was right, yes, it rained at home--but the rain was streaked with soot, the sky crying in black trails, something terrible, something terrible--

He saw the criminologist from Los Vegas--the one Sandburg was so ambivalent about--on a sunny sidewalk. He was wearing a ladybug patterned tie, checking his watch, caught by something across the street. He turned and stepped off the curb. His guide cried out and leaped after him, but he didn't hear her, and her hands were just a moment too late to pull him back from the speeding Volvo--

No, stop! But Jim was caught in the images. He had no control. They didn't stop. He saw a beautiful, thick jungle, a flowering tree, a sweet-smelling vine. And the smoldering wreckage of a helicopter scattered over an area the size of two basketball courts. Memory, and god, one he didn't want. Blood-smell and burnt-flesh smell and bowel smell. The enemy was already gone, and Jim could hear Tyler moaning in pain--

No, no--

He saw Sandburg leap into water. Deep water, bottomless water. He was pursuing someone in that water, someone who turned and fought viciously. He caught Sandburg hard in the stomach with his knee and shoved him down beneath the surface--

A thin-bladed knife with a wooden hilt. It had been cleaned, but there was still blood in the cracks where the metal met the wood.

Heat. Color. The sound of glass breaking. Jim cried out and reached for Blair, but of course Blair wasn't with him. Only memories--

Blair in that hospital room, saying, "How do you feel?"

Incacha, standing by the river: "Enqueri, what do you feel?"

"A competent guide can do a lot to improve things. You have a right."

In the stillness that followed, Jim found himself standing in the clearing in front of the low stone building. It looked new, the stone polished and painted, crowded pictures on all sides. Behind it, the funny, pointed hills were buildings, too. A speaking platform. A small temple.

Jim looked down at the wide, flat road, at the tiny, oval huts scattered out to the left, at the cheerful, flowering vines at the edge of the jungle. Jim threw back his shoulders and walked into the temple. The cat was waiting just inside the door.

That, again.

But he had to admit, it was a beautiful cat. Sleek. Strong. Fearless. Efficient. Jim's cat. It stepped aside to let him in.

Lee Brackett was waiting in the tank room. He looked like hell--wet, shaking, wild-eyed. He crouched behind the tank, one of the stone ornaments from the niches in his hand like a weapon. "I won't," he ground out. "You can't make me."

"Can't make you what?" Jim asked. "Can't make you be here? Can't make you face what you are?" He smiled. "I think I can." Jim shifted the ground under them, opened a blue dream, called out the jungle. "I've been here before. This is where I go. Where do you go?" Jim shifted the ground again, tipping the world toward Brackett.

It was cold here. And dark. The ground was ice and sharp and crumbling. A wind came up, searingly hot, burning, but no relief from the biting cold. It was empty and painful. Jim shifted them back to the ancient temple. Brackett was hunched forward, sobbing with pain. "Anger," Jim whispered. "Hatred. Disgust. And all of it directed inward. It was never about us. It was just about you. And you're--you're nothing."

Brackett heaved the little statue he was still holding. Jim dodged it easily. "You're broken." Jim shivered. "Blair would probably know how to fix you. Maybe." Jim couldn't. He barely understood the problem, couldn't imagine Lee whole and well. His blue dream was a wasteland, and he carried his hell inside him always. No wonder Lee was toxic. "I can't make it right. And I can't let you hurt any one else, Lee. I barely survived you. This has to stop." Jim extended his hand. He had claws. He couldn’t make it right, so he'd just take it away. "It won't hurt," he said.

Jim reached out and cut the connection between Lee Brackett and his inner wasteland. The claws sliced and tore and what was left wasn't so consumed with anger and self-hatred that it couldn't stand itself anymore. What was left wasn't much of anything.

Jim opened his eyes and sat up. In the cool room, he could hear their heartbeats: Bannister, the archaeologist, the doctor, Lee, his heart echoing in the water. Time seemed to slow down. The waterdrops falling from Jim's hair cast rainbow reflections on the wall. It was a crystalline, perfect moment. It was just like that first moment, after three days of stakeout, when the entire world had been within reach of Jim's hands.

"That was fast," Bannister said. "Are you with us, pretty boy? Or do we need to push you back in for another round?"

"I'm finished," Jim said. He brushed at the water running down his neck and stood up. The scientist handed him a towel--sentinel soft and perfectly clean. Jim stripped of the headband and dropped it on the floor.

"How are you feeing?" The doctor asked, brandishing the blood pressure cuff again.   
His smell was truly foul, and Jim turned his face away and held his breath.

"I feel fine," Jim said. He felt great, in fact. The dim room was bright, his skin felt clean, his balance was perfect.

The archaeologist was trying to rouse Brackett. He wasn't having much affect, though Brackett was sitting up now. He wouldn't answer or make eye contact. "Um, I could use some help?" he said, and the doctor left Jim and went to the other stone basin.

Bannister stepped closer, her gun causally aimed at Jim's heart. "I don't blame you," she said very softly. "He had it coming."

"It wasn’t revenge," Jim answered.

She watched him with a little amusement.

"This isn't anything to you," Jim said. "You're just hired help. It's not worth dying for. Get out now."

"I'm a professional," she said, her eyes flickering over to where Brackett was being heaved out of the tank.

She was, and she was good. But right now, Jim was better. Faster, he was sure. And he could see a small opening in the way she held her gun, directed her eyes. He could feel the single move that would break her wrist and put the gun in Jim's land. The doctor and archaeologist wouldn't be any kind of threat. Jim could have them subdued before the guards outside arrived--assuming they had any idea of the problem.

Bannister nodded at Brackett. "Don't think this means you've won." She sounded almost sympathetic. "The big boss is already on his way. When he hears about this, he's going to be very curious."

The boss was on his way. Jim hesitated. This was a new opportunity. Hiding a smile, he said, "Hears about what? I never touched him."

"Everyone else we put in a tank, the first dozen times, they came out crying. You're in a class by yourself, Detective. He'll want you to show off. You won't enjoy it." She stepped back to the door and leaned out to call the guards. Jim let them take him back to the concrete building. He wasn't in any hurry now.

He couldn't quite hold back a smile as the cuffs were removed and the door was locked behind him. He could hear Banister on a satellite phone making a terse report of the afternoon's experiment. Jim wished he could see the look on the face of the man she was talking to.

A set of dry cotton shorts and a T-shirt had been laid out on the cot. Jim stripped off his wet underwear and dressed. He turned around to face the others.

They weren't looking at him. They were very still, scarcely breathing, even Charlie Eppes, who was standing in the corner of his cell with his arms wrapped around his middle. "So, Dude," Spencer said, his voice thick with irony, "That sounded interesting."

"What did you do to him?" Katie asked softly. "He's going to be angry, when he gets over it."

"He's not going to get over it," Jim said. "He isn't a threat any more."

"The scientist, he tried it," Dr. Brennan said. "Took the tea, climbed into the water. He just had a short, unpleasant trip. I don't see how the tank could be that kind of dangerous for a normal person doing it just once."

"It wasn't the tank," Jim said. "It was me."

She motioned him to lower his voice, but Jim shook his head. "Bannister already knows. Lee won't hurt anyone ever again." Jim took a deep breath, leasing the urge to move, to act. Patience was what he needed now. Jim gave himself over to his new-found focus, watching a tiny spider climb up the plastic divider. Its legs rippled dancing--so slowly--up the surface. At the top was a three inch gap, room for the flow of air, a concession so that the sentinels wouldn't be so completely isolated from each other. At the top, the spider crept across the surface and down the other side.

"Don't get attached," Katie said. "I'm not sleeping with that in here. I'm going to kill it."

Outside, the helicopter engines began to warm up. A quiet, deep whine, rising through bone, making the air shake a little. Jim glanced at the light slanting through the palm-sized windows. There wasn't time for a round trip before dark. The man behind all of this wouldn't arrive until tomorrow.

Jim waited until the vibrations from the rotors was so loud that the cement blocks were vibrating and said, "Tell me the truth. What was this place for?"

She stood up and placed her hands flat on the plastic wall that separated her from Katie. "They'll never get what they want. The tank doesn't make us more compliant. It just makes us...."

"Better," Jim said.

She nodded. "Yes. Better. Sharper. And healthier, maybe. But not easier to control, which is what they wanted."

"They aren't using it right," Spencer said. "And they've used it on us too often. We're starting to have....problems. The only one who has been able to hold out at all is Charlie, and I don't know how much longer he has."

"It's all over," Charlie said. "The boss has to know that Luke Skywalker here showed up to rescue us. More people can't be too far behind. He's going to take the data, close the operation down, and get rid of the witnesses."

"He's going to try," Jim said, trying to communicate his confidence to them. Brackett hadn't managed to stop Blair and Simon, he was sure of that now. If Brackett had killed them, he'd have attacked Jim with that. So they were on the way.

The helicopter was lifting off the ground, now. Their window for conversation was disappearing fast. "We're getting out of here. Tomorrow. I promise."

Katie looked at him sadly. "We were all high, too, the first time we came out of the tank.

 

DETOUR~

The familiar scrape and click of the lock was followed by the staccato beeps of the alarm being disarmed. Joel paused in his packing and called, "Is that you, or have the men in black come to collect me?"

"That's not funny," Marcia snapped, already on the stairs of the narrow townhouse. "I mean, really not funny."

"Sorry...."

"So, have you heard from The Canadian yet?" She plopped herself down on the leather ottoman he used to reach the hatch to the crawlspace under the eves.

"No, apparently they're off doing a rescue in the mountains. They might be out by tomorrow afternoon, but...." But he couldn’t wait that long. Sighing Joel looked down at his hiking boots and his sneakers, hoping they would be adequate. He didn't have any experience with the rain forest. Except for a couple of fishing vacations to Canada, he hadn't been outside the United States since the army. When he'd been stationed in Iceland. "I've got an FBI agent meeting me for the connecting flight in Dallas, though. And an ex-U.S ambassador to Taiwan, or something. The Gatling girl's father."

"Listen, I've brought you something." She took a folder out of her suspiciously large purse. "It's an indictment for Bud Torrin. He's on his way there now. As a cop on official business, you can take your gun, as long as it's packed as baggage." She smiled, "And we have extradition with Sierra Verde. You don't have to convince the local authorities of anything now."

Joel flipped open the folder. The arrest warrant was on top, but it was also full of affidavits about--was that espionage? Tax evasion...smuggling...bribery? "He has his fingers in a lot of pies...." Joel said admiringly. "He must have three or four hands. How did you get this?"

"Jack has friends who have friends. They'd been sitting on the arrest, waiting for Torrin to do something they could get a clean conviction on. Kidnapping and conspiracy are really good ones." She shrugged, an economical gesture that didn't even ripple her hair. "One of Jack's old partners has been following the Brackett case for us. Oh, and according to McCall, don't take this to the local police at the capital. They're probably in Torrin's back pocket; they're on the take from everyone else. Make your claim to the army. Ask for Colonel Philippe Armand."

"He's not on anybody's payroll?" Joel asked, shutting the folder and slipping it into his carry-on.

"He's on our payroll," she answered wryly. "Joel--" she stopped and looked away.

"What?" he asked, squatting down beside her and taking her hand.

"Oh, no, I promised myself I wouldn't give advice."

He hugged her briefly. "I'll pretend you're not," he said.

"The only break you have at all is that Torrin is so greedy he's gotten careless here and there. The people you're fighting have resources, they're organized, and they don't care who dies. Be very careful."

"I promise," he said.

~End Detour~

~Sunday

Outside, the world starts to get light long before morning. Under the canopy of trees, it didn't get very bright quickly, but as soon as they could move, Blair and Simon were following the road again, picking their way carefully and trying not to grab at the branches around them for balance on the uneven ground. The air was cool enough to be uncomfortable and patches of thin fog were forming where the warm ground met the cooler air.

The chain link fence seemed to appear out of nowhere, stretching up a good three feet above Simon's head and topped with some kind of wicked barbed wire. For several long seconds, they stared at it in silence, their eyes going up and down the barrier and back and forth to the area beyond.

"Do you think this is it?" Blair whispered, unsure what to do.

"Well, were we expecting any other secret compounds in the bush?" Simon asked.

The remains of the road ran right under the fence and ended in a squat tumble of rocks about the side of a king sized bed. "I think I've seen pictures of arches," Blair whispered. "At the edge of Mayan cities or ritual sites. I don't see a wall, though...." he remembered a joke he'd heard somewhere, that archaeology was mainly a series of small walls. He stifled an hysterical laugh.

Simon grabbed his arm. "Listen," he whispered.

"Helicopter?"

Simon nodded. They looked up, but though they heard the chopper grow closer and lower, they couldn't see it. "It's landing. Come on. We have to find a way in."

"I don't suppose you bought wire cutters?" Blair asked hopefully.

Between them they had three guns, a wicked hunting knife, Blair's Swiss Army Knife, and a pair of miniature screwdrivers, but no wire cutters. They just scaled the fence, using the rain ponchos they'd slept on to pad the barbed wire on top. The exercise shredded the poncho on the bottom, of course. They could only hope that nobody came along and saw the scraps of torn plastic still caught in the teeth of the wire.

Staying low, they crept to the heap that was probably what remained of an entry arch and peered over. On the other side was a low temple. It was old and damaged, but the encroaching trees had been cleared away and the near wall had been shored up with stone. Beside the temple was a tarpaulin covering a pair of hammocks, and beside that a small, easy-up tent.

"The chopper came down over there," Simon whispered, indicating the other side of the temple. There were trees, but no low growth. Not a lot of cover. Simon looked around one more time and made a dash for the wall of the temple. Blair waited a moment and followed. From here they could see part of the helicopter, two much larger tents, something that might be a latrine, and a small, cement block building. A grubby man in cut-off jeans and carrying a rifle was headed right for them.

Simon pulled Blair back, pushing him against the stone wall of the temple. He waited for a moment and then, almost casually and without looking, reached out and snagged the armed man as he passed. Continuing the momentum, the two spun, Simon clapping a hand on his opponent's mouth just before crashing him head-first into the stone wall.

It had all been completely soundless--at least as far as Blair could hear. But that was the issue, wasn't it? One of Torin's hired thugs was a sentinel, wasn't she? And they no longer had the noise of the helicopter for cover.

Simon pointed at the fallen man, and then turned to peek back at the stretch of compound they could see. Blair, following instructions, made sure he was alive and tied him with some thin nylon rope from Simon's pack. When he joined Simon at the corner, it was just in time to see a man come running across the compound. He didn't look around, only darted into one of the tents, yelling something that Blair couldn't make out.

After a moment, something flew out the front of the tent and landed a few yards away. Blair was at completely at the wrong angle to tell what it was, but a moment later it was followed by something else.

Simon came to a decision, and tugging Blair by the shoulder, led him back slightly, and around behind the busy tent that had things flying out of it. Blair felt terribly exposed, but they made it to the far side of the further tent without being spotted. The last bit--around the front to the door--Blair didn't breathe at all, but at last they were under cover and in what appeared to be....

A kitchen? Blair looked again and blinked. They'd captured the damn camp kitchen. And some guy cooking--

Blair took back all the uncomplimentary thoughts he'd had about Simon's usefulness as he neatly poked a gun into the man's forehead and motioned him to stay still while Blair picked up a nearby roll of tape and bound and gagged him with it.

Simon looked around, his eyes clearly asking, 'now what?'

Blair pointed at the little camp stove and all the nylon tenting. "diversion?" he mouthed.

Behind them the tent flap flipped open. A tall, blond woman was standing in the doorway, an automatic handgun covering them. "Well, well," she said. "This is unexpected. Also convenient. We can dispose of all of you at once."

Simon, his gun politely pointed at the packed ground, said in his best cop voice, "Now would be a good time to cut a deal. You're going to need one. Sierra Verde has the death penalty, and American extradition isn't going to be much better; international kidnapping--I don't even know how we're going to prosecute that."

Blair added, "Forget that, experimenting on involuntary human subjects, that has to violate all kinds of international treaties going back to Nuremburg. Take the deal."

Pointing her weapon at Blair's head, she motioned Simon to put his down. "You boys really should play closer attention to the research. It's not the severity of the penalty that works best as a deterrent. It's the calculated likelihood of getting caught." She smiled.

"You've just been caught," Simon pointed out.

"And somehow, I'm still not motivated." She looked over the man still taped up on the floor. "He never was worth much. Untie him anyway. Please."

Slowly-- Pissed off-- Desperately trying to think of something to do--

Blair knelt down and reached for the tape. Nothing. He had nothing. He didn't know where Jim was or how Jim was or what the hell he was supposed to do--

Bannister flinched, half-turning away. Simon leaped, his hands closing around her wrist, forcing the gun up and away. She brought her knee up, hard, twice. The first time she caught Simon in the crotch, the second in the chest. Simon didn't let go.

Blair launched himself from his crouch on the floor, letting his weight unbalance her. She squirmed as she went down, her elbow crashing into Blair's head.

The gunshot wasn't close, but it froze them all for a moment. Simon recovered first, ripping the gun from Bannister's hands and clouting her hard on the side of the head. On all fours and swaying, she made a grab for the Blair. Simon kicked her hard enough to knock her over.

"Shoot her if she moves," Simon snapped, passing Banister's gun to Blair. He retrieved his own from the floor and poked his head out the door. "Well, hell, where are they going? Stay here," he threw over his shoulder, and took off.

Blair gaped. Simon--Simon couldn't mean for Blair to stay here! He stepped toward the door and froze. They couldn't leave Bannister free at their backs. They couldn't. And Blair couldn't exactly kill her.

She was glaring at him from her position on the floor. Her hair had come loose from its ponytail, and a handful of the blond hair was matted with blood from where Simon hit her. "Mind if I sit up?" she asked, turning over and stretching her legs out.

"Don't try anything. I will shoot you. I will."

"Of course you will. Shame it's too late to do any good."

Blair swallowed. "Don't underestimate Simon."

She shook her head. "It's already too late for your friend. Brackett killed him yesterday."

The world seemed to tilt, but Blair kept the gun level. "I don't believe you," he said.

"We were trying to get information out of him," she said evenly. "Find out just what he knew and how many other people knew it. But Brackett never did know the meaning of restraint."

"No...." Blair whispered. "Stop. I don't believe you."

"Suit yourself. You'll find out one way or the other."

Blair wasn't fooled. He knew she was trying to distract him. He knew that she would move. She had to. But that didn't mean she wasn't telling the truth.

***

Dinner the night before h ad been beans, fresh fruit, and very good bread. Sentinels under stress tended to have trouble eating, if the food was too complicated or poorly prepared. The food was fine, but Jim wasn't hungry. He drained the bottle of spring water and lay back on the narrow bed. He wasn’t tired, either, but he pretended to rest. He'd read about the trances that were as refreshing as sleep, but they'd never seemed very likely before. Now...now it was different. He was different. Jim just let his focus go and passed the night listening, ready, alert. The time passed very quickly, but without the gap in awareness that would indicate sleep. Just after dawn he heard the bone-familiar drum of rotors pounding air. Show time.

The others were awake. They glanced at each other occasionally, as though they were having a silent conversation. Jim ignored his own rising adrenalin and made himself stand calmly with his hands on the transparent door of the cell.

The helicopter touched down. Over the wind of the rotors, he could hear someone shouting, "Just give it a chance! The program's pre-recorded. Just put the head phones on and pop them in. In twenty minutes, it's over!"

In the far cell, Eppes, panicked, leaped to his feet and crashed into the plastic. Spencer, beside him, made helpless, calming motions with his hands. "Easy. Don't lose it now. You've kept them out better than any of us. Don't lose it now."

Under the slowing beat of the helicopter the argument continued, a second speaker barking, "I don't have twenty minutes to give you. This site is about to be compromised. We'll re-create the grotto somewhere else--"

"That will take months! Just give me one--"

"Tempie," Spencer murmured, looking at Dr. Brennan.

She nodded. "Lie down," she whispered, dropping her shoulders, looking suddenly dazed and disinterested.

Jim couldn't quite follow their example. He sat sullenly in the corner furthest from the door, the cot between himself and the exit. Spencer and Brennan seemed to want their captors to come in for them. A risky plan--if you could even call it a plan--but better than nothing.

The boss was close to the building now, and his voice carried clearly. "Well? What do you have to say for yourself?"

There was a short pause, and Bannister answered with a stiff politeness that Jim heard as a warning, "Lee still can't form a coherent sentence. The doctor got him to eat, but...he doesn’t have a clue what went wrong. He's been over the results of Ellison's EEG. They don't differ profoundly from the other subjects who entered stage three. That is as far as we got before we started packing up the research."

The boss grunted. "Everything that's not currently on disc, burn. We don't have time to be shipping out boxes. I want this place clean by this afternoon."

"What about the research subjects?" she asked.

"The left-hand ruin has a room big enough for several people, doesn't it? Well put them in there and set a small charge. No one will ever find them unless the Antiquities Board gets around to funding a restoration."

The outer door opened. Bud Torin, at last. Jim kept his shoulders hunched so that if his inward grin managed to escape, it wouldn't be noticed. Torin stepped into narrow access way and heaved a sigh. "Damn it. We were so close."

A short, thin man at his heels inserted, "Please. Just one. It will take twenty minutes. The results--"

"Won't do any good because we won't be able to sneak the subject out of the country alive." He pushed the smaller man back out the door and followed, saying, "Wallace, Baker, bring them out. Let's get this over with. Bannister, go get Brackett. He's too much of a liability to leave lying around."

This drew another protest from Torin's psycho little scientist. The tank shouldn't have affected normal people, and they needed more data and so forth.

Jim didn't bother to listen. They were being taken out. All together. Alive. It was a better chance than he'd hoped for.

The morning was cool and damp and a little foggy. Jim took a deep breath, smelled aviation fuel, kerosene for the generator, the whiff of the latrine even though it was downwind, empty beer cans, gun oil, old coffee--

Katie kicked him gently in the foot, derailing the catalog of scents before it could become a full blown zone. The two guards were herding them towards the cluster of funny, narrow hills. They weren't natural, Jim realized. They were ruins, so overgrown with bushes and vines that you couldn't tell until you found the door that it was manmade.

They were alone with the two guards and Torin; the little scientist has gone off to help with the packing up and Bannister still wasn't back with Brackett. One more guard trotted up and handed Torin a roll of rope and a small detonation rig. Torin sighed again. "See what's keeping Bannister and that doctor. We're on a schedule." He handed the rope to one of the guards. "Get them in and secure--"

With no warning or change of expression, Spencer turned and ran. The guards were surprised, the sentinels weren't. Before the first could aim his gun, Brennan had him disarmed and on the ground. Jim got the second and looked up to see that Spencer had headed towards the guard Torin had sent to check on the others. The man turned back towards the yelling just in time to have Spencer's fist nearly take his head off.

Torin was the last, then, but even as Jim turned toward him he heard the click of the safety coming off a gun. Katie and Eppes had gone for him. They were both heavily motivated, but they were also both thoroughly civilian. Katie was on her knees bleeding from her nose and Eppes was being held by his hair. Torin had a gun to his temple.

Panting, Torin ground out, "Now, let's try this again."

Spencer laughed out loud, though he didn't smell at all amused. "You're holding one of us hostage? You're going to kill all of us. What are you planning to bargain with."

Eppes ignored the exchange. His eyes were on Brennan. "Tempie, help me," he whispered.

"How?" she demanded. "I can't--" Her eyes flashed from Jim to Torin. Then her hand flashed out, snaring Jim by the wrist. Her grip was incredibly strong and completely irritable. It wasn't until she had done it that Jim realized that she had, in fact, pulled him into a blue dream.

 

The dream was only a little different from reality. They were still standing in the fenced camp, but the ruins were young again and the sun was high in the sky. Brennan was the hound dog. Eppes' meerkat looked, if anything, thinner and more mangy than before. For Jim, the body of the great cat was beginning to feel familiar. But Torin--

He wasn't, really, an animal. Not quite. He had fur. And paws. And wicked, sharp teeth. But it didn't really have a shape, or even edges, and mostly what it was made up of was emptiness and want.

"Charlie, I don't know how to kill it," Brennan cried. "I can't. I don't know how."

That was why she had brought Jim, though, wasn't it? Because Jim had stopped Brackett, and Jim could show Eppes how to stop Torin.

Eppes didn't seem to need any help. He'd hesitated only a moment before turning on the weak half-animal, tearing at it with short, sharp claws and small sharp teeth.

Unimpressive as the animal was, it didn't seem to need any help. It tore into the creature holding it with efficiency and thoroughness. He had used his grief and fear to keep him clear of the dream for months, but whatever has reasons had been, they hadn't included weakness or incompetence. The furred hunger tore and writhed, trying to pull away but too uncoordinated to move--

And then it was gone. The dream shivered, the blue light that colored the landscape shifting to grey and then to red. With a shout, Brennan collapsed the twisting dream and dumped them back into the sunlight morning of the real world.

The first thing Jim saw was that Torin was down. He'd fallen on top of Eppes, and they were both covered with bits of Torin's brain. Katie Gatling was standing over them holding a gun she'd taken from one of the downed guards. "He wasn't stopping," she whispered. "He was still--he was still--"

Jim took the gun and pushed Katie into Spencer's arms. "Stay here and watch them," he ordered, not adding 'the ones who are still alive.' "You can use the rope to tie them up. Eppes--"

Charlie Eppes had crawled out from under Torin's corpse and was stripping off his bloody tee-shirt. "The helicopter," he said. "If it takes off, we're stuck here."

"Yes, go," Brennan said. She turned to Jim. "There are four other guards. The doctor won't fight. The researchers are both--I'm hearing too many people."

Spencer, listening to the exchange, raised one of the liberated guns. He said worriedly. "Barnes should have made an appearance by now."

Before he had finished speaking, Eppes altered course and turned to the side. Several people were coming at a run. They came around the corner of the small prison, the staff and only two of the remaining guards. Jim raised the gun to meet them. The doctor and the two scientists stumbled to a halt, but the guards, seeing the prisoners, raised their weapons to fire.

"Cascade Police. Freeze!" For a moment, Jim assumed that the Simon's appearance around the corner of the building was some kind of hallucination, but the guards, caught between the escaped sentinels and the armed cop, stumbled to an angry stop.

"Who is he?" Brennan demanded, her voice hard and frightened.

"It's Simon--It's okay. It's okay. He came with me." Jim stumbled a little as he crossed the weedy ground to where Simon was disarming his prisoners. "This is--" Jim ran the count in his head again. "This isn't all of them. Two more guards. And Bannister, the sentinel--"

"We got the other two guards," Simon answered. "I left Sandburg covering the woman."

"Blair--" But Jim was already listening. Sandburg would be talking. He was never quiet.

Jim heard the background whisper of breeze and branches and insects. He heard a bird struggling to get away from a snake. He heard feet. Running.

Jim took off, back the way Simon had come, unable to explain--or even admit--his sudden panic. As he cleared the corner of the little prison and entered the main area of the compound, he smelled blood. Human. It was like a glowing trail, vivid and impossible to miss.

Jim followed the reek of blood into a sagging tent. There had been a fight--two of the tent poles had been knocked askew, and the floor was scattered with forks, apples, and dried beans. One of the guards was here. Conscious, he glared at Jim past the layers of tape that kept him immobile and silence.

For a moment Jim stood frozen, surveying the damage, refusing to drop his eyes just a little further because he knew what he'd see. When he finally did manage to force himself to look, for a moment he couldn't process the colors and shapes before his eyes. It was red, mainly. And red was bad, bad. Jim tumbled to his knees and started to reach out. He didn't finish reaching. He didn't know where to touch.

The blood was still flowing, he realized. That--finally--snapped the rest of reality into place. Jim clamped his hand down on that terrible leak and raked his gaze across the slack body.

Breathing. Blair was breathing. The blood was coming from a very small wound high on the inside of the thigh. Jeans and ground were both soaked, and Blair was terribly pale, but his heart was strong and even and Jim wasn't smelling death.

Jim ran his free hand over the rest of Blair's body, looking for heat-clues that would hint at another injury. He found a small lump growing just above the ear. Head injury. Damn.

Jim didn't know what to do but wait. Pressure was the only thing he could offer, he didn't even have a clean bandage. Only his hand, to keep Blair's blood inside his body.

Eppes arrived first. He yelped at the gory mess on the floor, but quickly began clearing empty pans and broken glass away so that Jim could sit down and take a more stable position. Simon and Brennan arrived not long after. Simon cursed succinctly and turned on Brennan. "You said there was a doctor--"

"That bastard is not touching Blair," Jim whispered.

"No. He doesn't get near anyone," Brennan agreed. "But I'll see if there's anything we can use in his supplies."

Simon squatted down beside Blair's head. "Jim? How's the kid doing?"

Finding the words to answer and dragging up sound took several seconds, but when Jim answered, he sounded almost coherent. "It's tidy. I've got the bleeding. It doesn't smell too bad."

"What are you talking about? Even to me it smells like--" Simon broke off, deciding against finishing that sentence.

Brennan returned and dropped down on the other side of Blair. She spread a clean towel on the ground and began to lay out first aid supplies. "Charlie, cut away the tent. We need more light than this."

Jim roused himself enough to say, "We can't fix this. The cut's only about an inch and a half long, but it's sliced the artery where it passes close to the skin."

"That's not a defensive wound." She frowned. "She cut him. To keep us here. She did just enough damage not to kill him but to make it impossible for us to follow her."

Jim tried to take a deep breath. It didn't help. "If I keep the pressure on, he'll make it until we can get this sutured."

Brennan shook her head. She seemed very pale, only her dark eyes showing color and life. "You're cutting off most of the circulation to his leg. And if help takes too long to come.... Jim, this is still leaking a little."

"So--what? You want to try to suture it? here?"

"I know the anatomy," she said calmly. "I know the theory. We have the sutures."

Jim swallowed. "I was trained as a medic. I've," Oh, this was hard to say. It was even hard to think about. "I've sutured in the field before."

"Right," she said. "You're in charge. I don't usually work with live people."

The next twenty minutes were pure nightmare. Brennan cut away Blair's jeans and poured antiseptic all over everything. Then, as Jim moved his hand, she did it again. Before Jim could even pick up the gloves, her hand flashed out. She darted in with a blunt probe and a pair of forceps and gently snagged and closed off the torn blood vessel. She had been incredibly fast, but even so, the first well of blood made a puddle obscuring the wound. Jim used a handful of the gauze to soak up the mess. Then he doused his hands again and took up the needle.

He tried not to think about Blair, unconscious and helpless and needing real help. Which Jim wasn't. He tried not to think about the clamp Brennan was using, which was completely wrong, and nearly crushing the little blood vessel. He tried not to think at all: Do. Just do.

Brennan had a tendency to kibitz, but her knack for handing Jim just what he needed and keeping the damage conveniently exposed made up for that. The tiny repair seemed to take forever, and when it ended it was with a startling suddenness that left Jim's hands shaking and his vision blurred over.

Jim heard someone bandaging the wound. He didn't know who. Some also stripped off Jim's gloves and sluiced his hands with water. Jim didn't know who did that, either. When the world came back into focus again, he was sitting against an over-turned table, Blair slumped in his lap, and Simon somewhere close talking on a phone.

Jim took a deep breath and ran his fingers over Blair's face. Still unconscious. The repair was holding, though. That was good.

Simon cursed suddenly and tossed a heavy satellite phone out the tear in the tent wall. "Battery is out," he griped. "Never mind. Help is on the way." He rooted in a cardboard box and produced a bottle of water. "Here," he said. "You should drink something."

Jim took the water mechanically and sucked half the bottle down. "So?" he asked, circling the compound with his index finger, "How are we doing?"

"Well, Spencer is taunting the prisoners. If he starts actually poking them with sticks, I'll have to step in. Charlie found some paper and a pencil and he's calculating where to put the explosives to destroy this place, starting with the cells. Katie and Tempie are watching him, though, so I don't think he's in danger of destroying evidence." He sighed. "Help is about forty-five minutes away."

Jim nodded. Blair was all right. He could wait that long. He ran a hand over Blair's tangled curls.

"Jim--?"

Jim looked up. Simon shifted uncomfortably, but didn't say anything. "What?" Jim asked.

"Are you all right?"

Oh. "I wasn't hurt, Simon."

"Jim--"

"Not now, okay?"

Simon sighed and turned away.

It was very quiet. Or maybe it was only Blair who was quiet. Probably--probably, it was better this way. That let would hurt like hell when he woke up. There weren't any heavy duty pain killers in camp, at least not that Brennan had found. Not even in the Doctor's supplies. Probably, this was not an accident, not that it mattered anymore. That doctor wasn’t touching anybody.

Brennan came. She checked Jim with her hands and nose, then turned her attention to Blair. She checked the dressing, felt his pulse, laid her left ear against his skull. Jim wouldn't have thought to listen for bleeding there.

She rocked back on her heels and sighed. "We were lucky, I think."

Jim nodded. After a few minutes she wandered away.

He'd probably been looking at the wolf in the shadows beside the stove for several minutes before his eyes registered what they were seeing. That part of the tent was still intact, and the shadows seemed disproportionately dark.

The wolf was standing very still. His head was lowered warily, and he leaned back slightly, as though he was preparing to bolt. "Hey," Jim said softly. "Come on over." He patted his thigh as though he were coaxing a pet.

The wolf, nervous, stepped back, his eyes never leaving Jim's face.

"Here," Jim whispered. "It's all right."

The wolf huffed and shifted his feet. Jim considered climbing out from under Blair and going over to it, but when he started to move, the animal flinched and began to pace the cramped space between the portable stove and the water barrel. "Right. Okay." Jim made a show of not getting up. "Easy there."

He came to the edge of the shadow, head still down, tail tight between his legs.

"Why don't you come on back over here," Jim coaxed, patting Blair's chest. "It's all right, come on home."

With reluctant steps, he left the shadow and crept forward. He moved obliquely, keeping over turned coolers and a fallen set of shelving between himself and the humans. When he finally inched forward the last few steps, he stretched out his muzzle and sniffed at the smears of blood and mud on Jim's knees.

"Yeah, I know," Jim told it. "Pretty scary. But it's okay now. It's going to be fine. Come on home."

The wolf looked up, faintly suspicious and accusing, and refused to move.

"Oh, for pete's sake, Chief!" Jim hissed in frustration, "Don't give me crap. I'm doing the best I--"

To Jim's utter horror the wolf disappeared. Before he could call out a frantic apology, though, Blair stirred in his lap and grunted.

"Oh, thank god," Jim gasped.

Blair's eyes popped open. "Jim. Man. You okay?" he croaked.

"Me?" Jim's laugh almost sounded like a sob. "Christ. Yes, I'm fine."

Blair made an aborted move to sit up and yelped weakly. "Ow. Shit. What the hell?"

"Hold still. It's okay. Here, let's get a little more comfortable." He slid out from under so that Blair was lying flat. The ground was soft, but he groped around and found some kind of towel to slide under Blair's head.

"Jim, when did we--Bannister! I was--" He started to move again, but Jim pinned him with a hand on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Chief. She got away."

Blair sagged. "Oh. Crap. Sorry. Sorry, man."

Jim sighed. "She was a trained killer, Blair. You couldn't have...you couldn't have stopped her. Simon--" Simon should never have left Blair alone with a suspect like that. But Simon hadn't had any choice. "It's not your fault."

Blair took a deep breath and tried to start over. "Ow," he said. "Jim--?"

"Head injury, maybe a mild concussion. And she cut you on the leg."

"Oh. Yeah. I feel that." He reached for the bandage, but Jim intercepted his hand. "I don’t remember that."

"We think she did it after you were already out." Jim didn't say they were lucky it wasn't worse. Luck had had nothing to do with it. The only reason Bannister hadn't killed Sandburg was that if his guide was dead, Jim would have had no reason not to hunt her down immediately.

Blair cursed softly.

"Yeah," Jim said. "Just relax. Help is on the way. We'll get out of here soon."

Blair nodded. "Thirsty," he complained.

Jim weighed the head injury--and the chance that it might lead to nausea--against how much blood had been lost. "We'll try half a swallow," he conceded, and picked up the bottle Simon had given him. There was still a little left; from his reaction, not nearly as much as Blair wanted.

"Wait a while. You can have more in a few minutes."

"What about the--the other sentinels?"

"It's all good, Chief. They're fine." Jim got up to find some more water. At the edge of his hearing, he could hear the blunted roar of distant helicopters.

***

The waiting room was long and narrow, and off to one side of the emergency room. The walls were painted plaster, not drywall. It was in good repair and probably clean enough, but it didn't look right, and Joel found it unsettling.

The hospital didn’t have a helipad, either, which meant that the rescued captives would have to be brought in by ambulance after they landed. Which should have been about--Joel looked at his watch--about four minutes ago. The wait was excruciating....

All the information they had was third-hand. Joel and the others had been standing in Colonel Armand's office when the call had come in that Simon had managed to liberate the kidnapped sentinels, but they needed someone to take charge of the suspects, and they had no transportation back to the city.

They had been shuffled into an outer office to wait. It was a domestic issue at the moment. Agent Boothe had protested. The man had a very polished, persuasive and intimidating protest, but it hadn't done any good, and over the last two hours they'd been shuffled from one office to another, until a junior police lieutenant suggested that they might want to wait at the hospital.

Through all of this the ambassador--former ambassador--had been strangely silent. He wasn't much like any politician Joel had ever met. When he had first met Ambassador Gatling and his assistant in the Dallas airport, he had assumed the man was subdued and distracted because his only child had been missing for weeks. Halfway through the flight he noticed that the assistant--an older Black man who was vigilant enough to be a body guard rather than secretary--was slipping the ambassador crystallized ginger and peppermints. Sentinels tended to run in families. Joel revised his guess from 'body guard' to 'guide.'

The ambassador was still subdued and quiet. He sat in the far corner, his arms folded, his eyes unmovingly on the floor. His guide stood close enough to just brush against his shoulder. Joel didn't try to make conversation.

He did try talking to Agent Boothe, who was stalking the length of the narrow waiting room in a limping pace and releasing a stream of icy criticism against the local police, the army, the government (both local and American), the hospital, and himself. Joel could see that he was absolutely terrified, and once or twice tried to distract him. It didn’t work, of course.

The ambassador suddenly jumped to his feet and raced out through the heavy doors into the emergency room entryway. He continued, without slowing, through the outer doors. Hurrying after him, Joel was in time to see the ambulance come to a stop in the looped loading zone.

It wasn't an ambulance so much as a converted van, and sentinels were pouring out of it like clowns out of a Volkswagen. "Daddy!" One of them--Joel had time to only register 'female' and 'filthy' before the girl threw climbed through the others and launched herself at the ambassador.

"Katie....Katie." For a moment there was silence. The ambassador's guide turned away, weeping. No one else moved.

The emergency room doors opened again, disgorging a nurse and a couple of orderlies. A tall, thin women picked her way carefully through the crowd. "Boothe? I'm right here," she said softly.

"Bones--I didn't believe them. I’m so, so sorry--"

Joel looked around, then looked again. He didn't see Simon. He didn't see Jim or Blair. His gut twisted. He'd been assured that they were all right--

The front passenger door of the van opened, and Jim hopped out. "Hey, Joel? Want to give us a hand?" He turned around and leaned back in. As he came up behind him, Joel could see that he was trying to scoot Sandburg out, and the process wasn’t going smoothly.

"Where's Simon?" Joel asked, trying not to stare at the blood that covered both of them.

"The police needed a statement, and he was the only one not headed immediately for the hospital."

In the end it took both of them to lift Blair down from the van and settle him in the wheelchair one of the orderlies produced. The other sentinels had already been whisked into the emergency room. Blair reached out and grabbed Joel by the arm. "Listen. The others. They don't have guides to speak for them. I'm sure they know their limits, but if the doctor's don't listen--"

"I'll take care of it," he promised. Blair looked like hell; pale and filthy as well as covered with blood. Joel would have promised anything to calm him down. Jim managed a brief, grateful smile as they were shuffled away behind an examining room door.

Katherine Gatling and Dr. Brennan both had guides who could handle them, but that left two others. Joel, unsure what to do, called out, Mr. Eppes? Mr. Spencer? I'm a friend of Blair and Jim's--Can I--"

A head--curly, dark hair, very dark eyes--poked out of the nearest door. "You don't have to yell," he said. "We're sentinels."

Joel thought of Marcia, imagining her alone and hurt in some foreign hospital, and said, "Is there anything I can do to help you?"

Scowling, he opened his mouth, shut it abruptly, and said softly, "My brother. I want to talk to my brother. Please."

It took a little explaining and a lot of desperation: the hospital was not, after all, a hotel, and the staff was very proud of that fact. Joel wound up handing over thirty bucks of the cash he had on him, but ten minutes later he was using his calling card to place a call to California while Charles Eppes hovered at his shoulder nearly shaking with anticipation. When the phone began ringing, Joel handed it over and went to see if Spencer was all right.

He was fine, if fine could be defined as, 'eating some kind of pastry and flirting with two nurses while getting his blood pressure taken.' Joel retreated to the waiting room and buried his face in his hands. Just a moment. He'd sit here a moment and get his shit together. And then he'd go see if anyone had gotten hotel rooms for these people.

***   
It would have counted as "made it back to civilization" that morning, except when they reached the base came the rescuers set up, they found it abandoned. Cleaned out. Gone. Apparently, while they'd been out of communication during the freak ice-storm on Wednesday, they'd been written off as dead. Nice.

Fraser had paused only for a moment. He was angry as well as surprised, but he tucked it away quickly and, spouting a cheerful Inuit parable, continued on down the trail. He was carrying a scoutmaster with a broken leg. Even after carrying him for two few days, it barely slowed him down.

Ray was so tired by this point that he felt like he was watching everything from outside his body. His boots had held up, and Fraser and Dief had made sure there was enough food to go around (as long as you didn't think about what you were eating) but his coat, which hadn't been quite warm enough on the cold days was sweatingly warm now that the early storm had passed over.

Kowalski wasn't doing much better. He'd gotten punchy last night, and the little sleep they'd gotten in the Scout-built lean-to hadn't done much good. By midmorning Sunday, he'd started singing. It wasn't pleasant.

When they finally reached the road, Ray planted himself in the middle and sat down to wait for the next car. Fraser had tried--briefly--to talk him into continuing down the road. "Every step is that much closer to home, Ray. 'A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.'"

"Nice. That Inuit?" Ray asked.

"Chinese, actually. Ray--"

Kowalski settled it by--for once--siding with Ray and sitting down beside him in the pitted road. After milling around tiredly, the scouts stumbled out and dropped around them.

It was only a twenty minute wait until a car came along. It wasn’t large enough to take them all, of course, but the driver was carrying a cell phone that still had juice in the battery. By late afternoon, they'd had a hot meal and a shower, and they'd moved on to the part where the local RCMP post was making noises about another commendation, the American press were clamoring for interviews, and Fraser was whispering sternly, "Ray, you're looking smug."

Somewhere in the chaos, a secretary handed over a note that a Joel Taggart in Cascade was trying to contact them. Worried, he retreated to the back office and commandeered a phone. Not that it did much good. He couldn't get a hold of Taggart. Or Jim and Blair. Or Captain Banks. Talking to a junior detective in Major Crimes, he was able to get a garbled report that they were all working on a kidnapping case somewhere in Central America.

When he finally gave up and hung up the phone, Fraser was standing in the doorway. "You heard?" Ray asked.

"Enough."

"All right." Ray heaved a sigh and rubbed his eyes with his hands. "How close is the nearest airport? We can sleep on the plane--"

Fraser was shaking his head. "It's done."

Ray thought about that. "Did it end...very badly?"

Fraser closed his eyes. "Bad enough. But it's done."

"Do we know what it was?"

"Not exactly, no." Fraser wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Oh." Ray thought some more. "Come on. There must be a motel in this town."

***   
John really, really hated seeing Rodney in the hospital.

Rodney was asleep when John got back from the latest meeting with the doctor on duty. John closed the door and leaned against it, watching his partner drool on the pillow. He took a cleansing breath, forcing down his anger and frustration and profound fear. Rodney couldn't cope with John's upset--he could barely cope with his own.

Rodney stirred and opened his eyes. "Am I paying you to just stand there and stare at me?" he asked. The vicious teasing was comforting. John supposed it was meant to be.

"Yes, actually. It's a cushy job." He went over and sat on the bed. "How are you feeling?"

"Curious." Rodney yawned. "What did the bloodwork say?"

"Normal. You're immune system is fine, your kidneys are fine.... "

"Well." Rodney's mouth tightened. "That would be very encouraging, except early Michaelson's doesn't always show up in the blood tests."

John smiled. "It's not Michaelson's. No joint pain. No mysterious swelling. Normal EKG."

"Fever," Rodney argued.

"Your fever went down yesterday."

"Which just leaves 'mysterious collapsing' on the list of symptoms--"

"Rodney. Sam Beckett says there hasn’t been a new case reported since Friday night. Your tests are all normal. I'm taking you home tomorrow."

"They haven't figured out what's wrong with me yet."

"At this point they have dozens of other sentinels to use as guinea pigs. I’m taking you home."

"And when I get sick again?"

John lifted his hand. "If you get sick again, I will be with you. Rodney." He took a deep breath. "Rodney, your whole life has been one long series off inexplicable and terrifying medical events. You have never let that get in your way. This....latest epidemic hasn't changed anything. Not really."

"Wow." Rodney said. "That's true. No, really. I've been living on borrowed time since grade school."

"That's the spirit," John answered, hoping Rodney couldn't smell how heartbroken he felt. "Anyway, the Senior design fair starts on Tuesday. You don't want to miss ripping their stuff to shreds." He smiled thinly. "It will be fine."

"You'll be right there."

"I promise."

 

***   
Don watched his father absently count rolls of socks twice, and then return to the dresser for Charlie's favorite pair of jeans and a set of ragged sweats. "He doesn't usually get airsick, but just in case, keep him in ginger ale. Remember, not Sprite."

"Yes, Don. Not Sprite. I've got it."

"If you get there and he's not ready--If you don't think Charlie's up to traveling. Wait. Take the extra day or five. I'll be fine, here. A little anticipation won't be the end of the world for anyone. And make sure he eats. Fresh fruit, if nothing else. But don't wash it in--"

"I'm sure I'll cope. I've been his father for a while now."

"It's just..." Don sighed. "I wish I could go with you."

"Believe me, so do I. But your brother on the plane will be bad enough, without trying to manage you in the airport."

Don twisted at the waist, just enough to call up a thin sliver of pain. It would be several more weeks before he could move like a normal person. A trip to Central America was out of the question, though he would have sold his soul to go after Charlie himself.

Not a small irony, considering that, growing up, the last thing he ever wanted to be was a guide. He'd only taken that intro sentinel science course as a way of moving on. He'd thought if he understood Charlie....he could somehow let all the weirdness of their childhood go. Forgive and forget, right? Except by the end of the first week he was completely laid out by the astonishing idea that, "Donny, your little brother could really use your support" wasn't just a shortcut for nagging. When you understood what it meant to live in a sentinel's world...Charlie was a miracle.

"Anyway, Larry's coming along. We'll be all right."

"Yeah." Don shifted restlessly in the chair and immediately regretted the movement. "About...Fleinhardt."

Dad smiled briefly over his shoulder. It barely covered the anger. "Yes?"

"Look, don’t get me wrong. I like the guy. I do. But he's not...the most, well, stable person in the world."

"He's not crazy. And he's your brother's best friend."

"Yes. I know. And he's a great guy, really. But--"

"The bottom line, Don, is that I don’t need 'stable.' I can do stable. What I need is an extra pair of hands. Someone comforting. Charlie trusts Larry, and given what he...what he must be going through right now...." Dad broke off and fled the room. He hadn't cried once since Charlie was taken. At least not where Don could see.

Well, hell.

And Don had to admit he had a point. Charlie did trust Fleinhardt. Completely. Once a year he let Fleinhardt use a ten pound hammer to break a cement block on Charlie's stomach as part of a physics demonstration. Yes, 'quirky astronomer' didn't begin to cover it. He was as much on another planet as Charlie was most of the time. But while it wasn't the same strange planet, Don had to admit that their separate idiosyncrasies had given them a special connection. With Don unable to travel, Fleinhardt might be a good second choice.

Dad bustled back into the bedroom carrying Charlie's toothbrush, toothpaste, and floss. "Look, when Larry gets here, I don't want you giving him any--"

"No, I won't. I promise."

"He's a good guy. And he's always been good to your brother."

"Right. I give...."

"I've called Mrs. Helman. She'll check on you tomorrow afternoon. And Tuesday afternoon, if we're not back by then. Meanwhile, that fed friend of yours, Megan, she said to call if you needed anything. Your own personal shopper--"

"Yes, Dad, you told me."

"Look, I just want you to...."

"Yeah, I get it. I'll be fine."

He turned around and looked at Don sternly. "You just make damn sure you are."

"I'll be fine. Just. Go get him. Bring him home."

***

Greg 'knocked' by tapping his foot on the floor. Polite. Grissom suppressed a sigh as he looked up. "You're in early."

"Yeah...I was...I wanted to..."

He didn't bother suppressing this sigh. "You have to look at me, Greg."

Embarrassed, he faced forward. "I wanted to talk."

Obviously. "About a case?"

"No, about the other stuff. Have you seen the news? Two hundred and seventy-three sentinels down in the last week. No warning. No history. One death confirmed."

Grissom wiggled his jaw so that he wouldn't give in to the impulse to grind his teeth. "Yes. I don’t need the update. I just got out of a meeting with Mobley and Ecklie where I had to convince them that every sentinel on staff didn’t need to be taken off active duty. As it is, the guides are going to have to sign off on all our paperwork for the next week."

Greg swallowed hard and looked away.

"Greg? Have you had any problems?"

"I feel fine." He didn't smell sick.

There was a good chance the danger was over. There hadn't been a new case reported in two days. "But something is bothering you." Something he'd come to his supervisor for, not his own guide. It might be important. Grissom tried not to look impatient.

"Do you ever have really weird dreams?"

"All the time. It comes along with the enhanced senses."

"About animals?"

Grissom wondered if this was some kind of trick question. "Sometimes," he said.

"Do you ever--Do you know what it means? When you dream about animals?"

Grissom ran that twice and decided he must have misread that. The question just didn't make any sense. "Can you repeat that?"

"Do you know what it means, when we dream about animals?"

"Well--I know what it means when I dream about animals. I don't know what it means for anyone else." Maybe it was some kind of trick question. It didn’t make any sense otherwise.

Apparently that was the wrong answer, because Greg stood up and paced the office twice before facing Grissom and saying, "When kids are talking--they always say seeing animals means you're losing your mind."

"Kids say a lot of things just to be cruel. Or because they're afraid."

"So it doesn't...."

"If you can't tell whether the dreams are real or not, you have a problem. But that's true for anyone. And any kind of dream."

"But what causes, um, it?"

"That's the wrong question. Our neuroscience isn't far enough along to answer it. Whatever the mechanism behind them, Greg, your dreams are your dreams. The relevant question is, 'What do they mean to you?' Worrying about anything beyond that...is just a way of avoiding yourself."

"So, what? It's just about my subconscious?"

Grissom shrugged. "Maybe. I don’t know. You have to figure that out yourself."

Greg laughed. "Man, you are no help--"

Grissom nodded, pleased. "Yes, that's what I've been saying."

 

***   
Marcia managed to snag the phone on the first ring. Jack didn't even stir in his sleep. "Hello?" she answered softly, retreating from the living room where Jack was sacked out on the couch.

"Marcia, it's Sam Beckett. Is Jack available?"

Marcia extended her attention to the even breathing in the other room. "I'd rather not wake him. Unless you have news."

"No, actually I called to say I don't. I've been collating patent data, but nothing useful is floating up. I’m at a dead end...."

"How's your family?" She'd never met Sam, but Jack and John had mentioned him often enough.

"Fine. Good. None of us have had a problem since Tuesday. How's Jack? "

"Well, how do you think? His students are freaked out. One of his best friends might drop dead at any moment--oh, and most of his other friends are sentinels, including you and me. And just because we haven't gone down yet doesn't mean we won't. And he doesn't have a clue why or when it will end. Oh, and he's still in really rough shape from the most recent time he was shot. So, tell me, Doctor, how would you guess he's doing?"

The pause on the other end of the line was so long that she began to regret losing her temper. "Marcia, is he sick?"

"I don't know. He doesn’t smell sick--" Not that she was sure she would know. Marcia could categorize forty-three different kinds of explosive by scent alone, but human smells weren't nearly so clear.

"How does he smell?"

"Um...."

"Just stressed? Or kind of like fruit?"

"What?" Marcia couldn’t decide if the question was incoherent or some kind of nasty crack.

"Sweet? Like apples?" he coaxed patiently. "Or maybe sour, like grapefruit?"

"Oh. No. Not like fruit."

"Like cabbage cooking?"

"No!" but she knew that one, not that he put words on it. It was a really bad sign. "No."

Beckett sighed. "All right. That's good. If you're worried, well, you probably have a reason. But it doesn't sound like we're looking at an emergency. When he wakes up, have him call me. I'll...have a word with him. All right?"

She swallowed hard. "Thanks."

***

"Man, I just can't believe it. Four sentinels held captive for months and they all get discharged. Meanwhile, I come in on the last act, and I spend the night in the hospital."

Jim widened his eyes and said with sarcastic sweetness, "Aw, Chief. I'm disappointed. Surely, you don't begrudge those poor sentinels escaping a stay in the hospital!"

Blair sputtered while Jim laughed at him. "Man, I so want to go home?"

Jim shook his head, still chuckling. "Not hardly, Chief. The local authorities, the feds at home--there are a lot of people who are going to be writing reports about what happened down here."

"Oh." That thought sobered both of them. "Are there going to be questions we can't answer?" Blair asked. He didn't mean questions they didn't know the answers to.

Jim shrugged. "I was completely obsessed with finding Brackett. Driven. A sentinel on a mission, chasing wild speculations."

"Right. So, the truth. Is that going to cut it. Because, Jim, be both know a lot of what was going on was...way off the map?"

"Nobody's going to ask if I came down here chasing visions. And even if...somebody was inclined to question my sanity, Katie, Charlie, and Tempie are all connected in high places, and the people who have them are...very glad to get them back."

"This is not going to be fun." Blair sighed and leaned back into the pillows. His eyes popped open mid-relax. "Crap. This is going to be all over the news. My mom--"

"Do we know where she is?"

"Well...she was invited to be one of the speakers at an environmental conference in Athens. But--it's not October yet, is it? She's still in Sedona, shop-sitting while Juniper takes some time off after having the baby." Blair grinned inwardly. As always, discussing the simplest of Naomi's activities made Jim look a little shell-shocked.

"Tell me it's not a head shop."

"Oh, man, no! High-end art. Sculpture, mostly. Very posh."

"Right. Of course."

Jim's bland expression made Blair laugh out loud, which shot a spike of pain right through his head. Jim re-focused immediately. "Hey, no. Easy, there. You need anything?"

"No, since I can't go home!" Jim winced at that, and Blair added quickly, "Sorry. Sorry. I can do patient."

Jim sat down on the edge of the bed, close enough to Blair that their hips brushed. "I smell dinner coming. Beans and rice, you like that. And I'll break you out of here tomorrow."

Blair nodded. If he listened, he could hear the cart in the hall, and the aid talking to other patients. The window was open, and the evening breeze coming in was warm and a little salty. "Jim, about Brackett--"

"Not yet, Chief. Okay?"

"Your call," Blair said. He felt a little shut out. He also felt sore and exhausted and more than a little fuzzy-headed, even after a long nap.

"Sandburg--I--I just--"

"You're processing." Blair gestured limply. "God knows you've got a right. I just...well, that doesn’t matter. Even if I could fix it for you, I couldn't make it all better tonight."

Jim digested that in silence. Out on the hall, the dinner cart crept closer. "The thing is, it should be all better. He can't hurt...anyone anymore."

"It can't be that simple. You're carrying a lot of baggage about--"

"How I did it," Jim whispered, and Blair was suddenly wide awake and very cold. "How I stopped him. And I'm going to have to tell you. I don't know who else we should tell...about what they did to us. If we should tell anyone. The experiments didn’t work the way Torin wanted them to, but, Blair, it was so dangerous. The idea of someone else fucking with people's brain's like that...."

Blair frowned, trying to understand. "The animals themselves aren't bad, Jim. I--we--know that."

"But taking shortcuts to animals? Forcing them? Is that okay, even if the sentinel volunteers to try? If we tell people too much, they might...get curious. Not that we can keep it a secret. I mean, obviously, I can't go to Simon and say, 'Boss, the reason Brackett is too incompetent to prosecute is because I went into a dream with him and ripped his soul to pieces.' But I can't pretend Torin wasn’t putting sentinels in half-assed sensory deprivation tanks and feeding them hallucinogens until they saw things. Then never got a chance to destroy the records. We can't hide that."

"But you know," Blair said. "And you'll have to cope with it while lying about...everything. It won't be easy."

"Dinner's here," Jim said, rising to meet the aid at the door.

"Jim--"

"You should eat. And get some more rest. You smell exhausted."

Right. Okay. Blair let it go. This wasn't the place, and Blair wasn't thinking clearly enough for it to be the time. "What about you? Have you eaten today?"

"Simon brought me some ice cream when he dropped by while you were asleep. Don't look at me like that; it's what they had in the gift shop. I'll head over to the hotel later, get something to eat, check on the others." He pulled around the table and set down the tray.

Blair somehow managed to keep from reminding him to be careful.


End file.
